scream Cannot contact AT&T WorldNet NOC

Mon Sep 29 00:17:43 UTC 1997

On Sun, Sep 28, 1997 at 05:34:09PM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
> If you don't directly connect or peer with them, have you tried going
> through your upstream provider to get a trouble ticket referral for their
> NOC?  AT&T has been very good about providing the secret code-word and
> telephone number to their direct inter-connects and peers in the past.

SprintLink is our upstream.  After three hours they called back and
said that I "have to contact the Computer Crimes Division of the
FBI".  Since the attempts stoped hours ago, I'm just going to pay
close attention to my logs and follow up if it happens again.

Someone apparently from a WorldNet dial-up account, calling in via
New Orleans and Dallas was sending large numbers of TCP connections
to port 1080.  That's of course the default Socks Port.  We don't run
socks.  Never have.  The connection attempts were blocked and logged.

The reasons could be:

  1) stupid user entered in the wrong address for a socks proxy
  2) Denial of Service attack

It if were #1, then why would it be coming from two different cities
and why sooooo many connections.  If it was #2, why am I not seeing
more connections and why TCP?  IT seems to me that it's kinda
pointless to spoof the source address on a TCP connection unless you
are *very* clever.  Why only port 1080?

--Eric

-- 
Eric Wieling (eric at ccti.net), Corporate Communications Technology
Sales: 504-585-7303 (sales at ccti.net), Support: 504-525-5449 (support at ccti.net)

I don't bother to set my alarm clock anymore.  Someone always pages
me before I need to wake up anyway.

*scream* Cannot contact AT&T WorldNet NOC

scream Cannot contact AT&T WorldNet NOC