Spanning tree melt down ?

Wed Nov 27 17:13:36 UTC 2002

At 11:10 AM -0500 11/27/02, Eric Gauthier wrote:
>I don't know which scares me more: that the hospital messed up spanning-tree
>so badly (which means they likely had it turned off) that it imploded
>their entire network.  Or that it took them 4 days to figure it out.

If it's anything like a former employer I used to work for, it's 
possible the physical wiring plant is owned/managed by the telco 
group which jealously guards its infrastructure from the networking 
group.

A subnet I used to work on was dropped dead for a day when a 
telco-type punched a digital phone down into the computer network 
causing a broadcast storm. It took half a day just to get the wiring 
map, then another half day to track down the offending port because 
the tech in the network group dispatched to solve the problem did not 
have a current network map.

The subnet in question contained a unix cluster with cross-mounted 
file systems that processed CAT scans for brain trauma research. The 
sysadmin of that system told me that they lost a week's worth of 
research because of that cock-up.

Hospitals are very soft targets network-wise, with hundreds, if not 
thousands of nodes of edge equipment unmanned for hours long 
stretches. On a regular basis, I saw wiring closets propped open and 
used as storage space for other equipment.

Track down a pair of scrubs, and you can walk just about anywhere in 
a hospital without being challenged as long as you look like you know 
where you are going and what you are doing.

Ten years later, there are still routers there that I can log into as 
the passwords have never been changed because the administrators of 
them were reorganized out or laid off and the equipment was orphaned.

Minimal social engineering plus a weak network security 
infrastructure is a disaster waiting to happen for any major medical 
facility.
-- 

Regards,

Chris Kilbourn
Founder
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