NIST: 5% of attacks against Internet infrastructure

Tue Jun 1 21:36:12 UTC 1999

Operational only in the sense that network operators will get asked about
this fun statistic by their managers on Internet infrastructure attacks.
NIST's ITL bulletin covered "Computer Attacks: What are they and how to
defend against them" this month.

NIST researchers estimated that 5% of the computer attacks they analyzed
were against "Internet infrastructure" (which, in their analysis, includes
both routers and firewalls).

http://www.nist.gov/itl/lab/bulletns/may99.htm

Instead of diverting your manager's attention by yelling "Watch where
you step, the token fell out of the ethernet!" you might try soothing
his concerns by reporting the bulletin also said most Internet
infrastructure attacks were scanning and denial of service, and few
involved penetration attacks.

# config t
(config)# ! too many commands to list here, ask the TAC for help securing
(config)# ! your router
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation