The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat?

sgorman1 at gmu.edu sgorman1 at gmu.edu
Fri Jan 20 14:19:46 UTC 2006



As you mentioned before this is largely because the customer (SIAC) was savvy enough to set the reuirements and had the money to do it.  A lot of that saviness came from lessons learned from 9/11 and fund transfer.  Similar measures were taken with DoD's GIG-BE, again because the customer was knowlegable and had the financial clout to enforce the requirements and demand the information.  My argument simply is if this kind of awareness can be made more broadly available you end up with a more resilient infrastructure overall.  An anonymous data pool is just one suggestion of a market based mechanism to do it.

----- Original Message -----
From: Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com
Date: Friday, January 20, 2006 5:37 am
Subject: Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat?

> 
> > Imagine if 60 Hudson and 111 8th
> > were to go down at the same time? Finding means to mitigate this
> > threat is not frivolously spending the taxpayer's money, IMO;
> > although perhaps removing fiber maps is not the best way to 
> > address this.
> 
> No, removing fiber maps will not address this problem
> now that you have pinpointed the addresses that they
> should attack.
> 
> Separacy is the key to addressing this problem. Separate
> circuits along separate routes connecting separate routers
> in separate PoPs. Separacy should be the mantra, not
> obscurity.
> 
> End-to-end separation of circuits is how SFTI and other
> financial industry networks deal with the issue of continuity
> in the face of terrorism and other disasters. In fact, now
> that trading is mediated by networked computers, the physical
> location of the exchange is less vulnerable to terrorists because
> the real action takes place in redundant data centers connected
> by diverse separate networks. Since 9-11 was a direct attack on
> the financial services industry, people within the industry 
> worldwide, have been applying the lessons learned in New York.
> Another 9-11 is simply not possible today.
> 
> --Michael Dillon
> 
> 
> 
> 



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