WANTED: ISPs with DDoS defense solutions

Mon Aug 4 21:59:53 UTC 2003

Randy Bush wrote:
>>anti-spoofing eliminates certain avenues of attack allowing one to focus
>>on remaining avenues, and hence (as Vix stated) is necessary but not
>>sufficient.
> 
> 
> it turns 1% of the technical problem into a massive social business
> problem which, even if it was solvable (which it practically isn't),
> would also be addressed by technical solutions where no spoofing is
> involved.
> 
Spoofed packets are harder to trace to the source than non-spoofed 
packets. Knowing where a malicious packet is very important to the 
process of trying to stop the malicious packet(s). Anyone without 
anti-spoof filtering has no interest in managing their network, keeping 
it secure, and assisting the Internet as a whole.

Without spoofing, one could take a list of 5,000 IP addresses involved 
in an attack and say, "These are either compromised or direct attacks," 
and issue reports to the correct people (with a few scripts). With 
spoofing, there is no reliable way of knowing if a host is compromised, 
the attacker, or if it's just another IP being spoofed. In such cases, 
on has to contact each IP owner and find out if spoof protection is 
enabled. If it is, then the party needs to look into the problem. If 
not, then it's just another waste of time.

-Jack