mitigating botnet C&Cs has become useless

Wed Aug 2 06:58:00 UTC 2006

"cyberspace is just a meatspace overlay"

I'm just sitting here with my mouth open and nothing to say.
 I'm going to have to chew and digest that mouthful of meat
(and all it implies) for a while.  (pun intended... :-)

"the only technical solution is "gated communities""  That's
definitely what's done now in meatspace for protection
against the vile dweebs.  Lotsa protection where the money
is and badlands where it isn't.

scott

----- Original Message Follows -----
From: Paul Vixie <vixie at vix.com>
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: mitigating botnet C&Cs has become useless
Date: 02 Aug 2006 06:29:55 +0000

> surfer at mauigateway.com ("Scott Weeks") writes:
> 
> > ... I'm just saying that there has to be a better way
> > than police-type actions on a global scale.  ...
> 
> no, there doesn't have to be such a way.  where the stakes
> are in meatspace (pun unintended), the remediation has to
> be in meatspace.  cyberspace is just a meatspace overlay,
> it can only pretend to have different laws when nothing
> outside of cyberspace is at stake.  i think that the days
> when botnets were mostly used for kiddie-on-kiddie
> violence or even gangster-on- gangster violence are
> permanently behind us.  it's up to the real LEOs now,
> because it's on their turf now, which is to say, it's in
> the real world now.
> 
> as was true of spam when i said this about spam ten years
> ago, it is true now of botnets that the only technical
> solution is "gated communities".  but the internet's
> culture, which merely mirrors the biases of those who use
> it, requires the ability for children to go door to door
> selling girl scout cookies, without necessarily having the
> key code to every one of the doors.
> 
> so the internet community has no appetite for the
> trappings of any technical solution to botnets.  the
> meatspace community and their LEOs absolutely *do*. -- 
> Paul Vixie 