FW: Re: Is there a line of defense against Distributed Reflective attacks?

Tue Jan 21 01:34:03 UTC 2003

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

> > Indeed it does break that. P2P clients: Mostly transfer illegal content.
> > As much as a lot of people love using these, I'm sure most realise they're
> > on borrowed time in their current state.
> > And I'm sure that if they were gone tomorrow, I'm sure they'd be back in
> > another fashion soon.
>
> That may be, but its still a problem... I believe http and ftp also
> transfer illegal content, should we shut them down? Email too? Often there
> is illegal content  in email. :(

Ok before this gets out of hand :-)
I wasn't talking about ISP's policing their customers in any way.
I was merely stating that the blocking of inbound SYN packets would put a
dent in the number of usable zombie DoS clients while at th same time
having the side effect of breaking other server-type software such as P2P
clients.

I also went on to state that if the functionality of such clients really
did break as a result of this, the majority of people wouldn't have (too
much) of a right to complain as the clients are (mostly) used for illegal
traffic. Yes this would probably cause a large loss of business in *some*
areas where multiple broadband providers are availible. In other places
where a broadband monopoly exists, you would either see a switch to
business level contracts or a slight dip in business or people just living
with it.

For the record I'm not in favour of ISP's (or anyone else for that matter)
policing the internet.