[NANOG] IOS rootkits

Sun May 18 14:11:01 UTC 2008

Let's put it this way.

1. Yes there's nothing to patch, as such

2. It can be prevented by what's widely regarded as BCP on router
security, and has been covered at *nog, in cisco training material,
etc etc for quite some time now.

I am much less concerned about security conferences discussing this
than about the (highly uninformed) publicity that accompanies these
conferences.

Yes, this sounds a lot more like the bugtraq v/s full disclosure
discussion than I'm comfortable with, but I still think this could
have been handled a lot better.

--srs

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 7:27 PM, Dragos Ruiu <dr at kyx.net> wrote:

> Bullshit.
> There is nothing to patch.
> It needs to be presented at conferences, exactly because people will play
> ostrich and stick their heads in the sand and pretend it can't happen to
> them, and do nothing about it until someone shows them, "yes it can happen"
> and here is how....
> Which is exactly why we've accepted this talk. We've all known this is a
> possibility for years, but I haven't seen significant motion forward on this
> until we announced this talk. So in a fashion, this has already helped make
> people more realistic about their infrastructure devices. And the
> discussions, and idea interchange that will happen between the smart folks
> at the conference will undoubtedly usher forth other related issues and
> creative solutions.  Problems don't get fixed until you talk about them.
> cheers,
> --dr