DoS ATTACK IN PROGRESS

Sat Mar 7 18:47:09 UTC 1998

Alex Rubenstein wrote:

  networks being used to facilitate the smurk (i.e. COME ON PEOPLE, TAME YOUR
  GODDAMN ROUTERS)

I am real sympathetic.  But NANOG is just a mailing list.  The folks that read
it by and large have already tamed their routers.  If you want to have an impact
on this problem, you'll have to grab your telephone and start contacting specific
sites and the follow up with email.  I know this is a lot of work because that's
what we did with the netflow data we got from our smurf attack. 

In our efforts we found generally:

  1. It is pretty easy to get sites to fix this once you get their attention.
     Our success rate with a telephone was about 80 percent.  You are in a real
     good position to get their attention when you can say 'Your site is attacking
     my network and it hurts.'
  2. Federal networks are the most trouble.  NASA is not very well organized.
     After many calls, we got attention at NASA-ames and JPL, but we could not
     figure out who at NASA-Goddard to talk to.

Ragging on this list is probably within its charter.  That's not the problem.  
It is simply not going to be effective.

-jim warner, UC Santa Cruz