Unflattering comments about ISPs and DDOS

Mon Dec 6 16:56:49 UTC 2004

This article in ZDNET UK entitled "WIth ISPs like this, who needs 
enemies?" 
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/andrewdonoghue/0,39027004,39175983,00.htm
contains some rather unflattering comments about ISPs who don't help
customers deal with DDOS attacks. The head of security technology
for a major ISP named in the article said:

"Why should ISPs do something? It's very much as if people want
something for nothing. This noise is superfluous and silly."

The thinking is this. There are two operational problems
here, one big and one small. The big one is when your
customer is the target of DDoS. The small one is when
your customers originate the DDoS. 

I think the writer is telling us to treat these as two sides of the
same problem. If management buys into this view then it
would make the business case for the operational effort
needed to clean up botnets.

And if enough people clean up the bots on their network,
then a case can be made for depeering (or severely damping)
networks that don't clean up their act.

--Michael Dillon