Open Letter to D-Link about their NTP vandalism

Sat Apr 8 01:26:26 UTC 2006

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Kevin Day wrote:

> I think the lesson here is that any service you make available to the public 
> (NTP, DNS, IRC, SMTP, whatever) is going to be used in ways that do not match 
> with your desires. If you're not willing to ACL/police the service, you're 
> going to have to accept that people are going to use it in ways you'd rather 
> they didn't.

The repeated suggestions that the best response to this sort of 
situation is to 'deal with it' are saddening. Did he "deserve it" 
because of the short skirt he was wearing?

Companies behaving irresponsibly and releasing (selling!) code that 
abuses a shared public resource should not be the norm.

Lots of people crap in the commons. But saying it is inevitable, and 
actually mocking people who care, is inexcusable.

Someone's accountable here, and in this case it is simple to 
determine who. The behavior is clearly antisocial and should be 
addressed.

Member-waving about spare gigabit ports and what traffic levels are 
inconsequential really is beside the point.

matto

PS: This puts D-Link on the same list I had Belkin and Netgear on.

--matt at snark.net------------------------------------------<darwin><
   Moral indignation is a technique to endow the idiot with dignity.
                                                 - Marshall McLuhan