Blackholes and IXs and Completing the Attack.

Sat Feb 2 21:37:01 UTC 2008

> I was not proposing he Null routing of the attack source in the other
> ISPs network but the destination in my network being Null routed as a
> destination from your network out.

i explained why this is bad -- it lowers the attacker's costs in what
amounts to an economics war.  they can get a web site taken down by its
own provider just by attacking it.  they need fewer resources for their
attack once they know the provider's going to blackhole the victim.

> This has no danger to the other network as it is my network that is
> going to be my IP space that is blackholed in your network, and the
> space blackholed is going to be an address that is being knocked of the
> air anyway under DoS and we are trying to minimise collateral damage.

your collateral damage is of precious little interest to someone else's
backbone staff, unless they can route-filter the potential announcements
so that you are unable to also remotely blackhole addresses you don't
advertise.  i explained this as an insurance/ISO9000 problem.

> I think you might have thought I was suggesting we blackhole sources in
> other peoples networks - this is definatly not what I was saying.

i explained why this would be a more sensible approach, but STILL unworkable.

> So, given we all now understand each other - why is no one doing the above?

now that we've rehashed what we both said, i think we're done here.