Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?
Siegel, David
David.Siegel at Level3.com
Thu Feb 7 21:19:22 UTC 2013
I remember being glued to my workstation for 10 straight hours due to an OSPF bug that took down the whole of net99's network.
I was pretty proud of our size at the time...about 30Mbps at peak. Times are different and so are expectations. :-)
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Watson [mailto:brett at the-watsons.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 6:07 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?
Hell, we used to not have to bother notifying customers of anything, we just fixed the problem. Reminds me a of a story I've probably shared on the past.
1995, IETF in Dallas. The "big ISP" I worked for at the time got tripped up on a 24-day IS-IS timer bug (maybe all of them at the time did, I don't recall) where all adjacencies reset at once. That's like, entire network down. Working with our engineering team in the *terminal* lab mind you, and Ravi Chandra (then at Cisco) we reloaded the entire network of routers with new code from Cisco once they'd fixed the bug. I seem to remember this being my first exposure to Tony Li's infamous line, "... Confidence Level: boots in the lab."
Good times.
-b
On Feb 6, 2013, at 5:41 PM, Brandt, Ralph wrote:
> David. I am on an evening shift and am just now reading this thread.
>
> I was almost tempted to write an explanation that would have had
> identical content with yours based simply on Level3 doing something
> and keeping the information close.
>
> Responsible Vendors do not try to hide what is being done unless it is
> an Op Sec issue and I have never seen Level3 act with less than
> responsibility so it had to be Op Sec.
>
> When it is that, it is best if the remainder of us sit quietly on the
> sidelines.
>
> Ralph Brandt
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Siegel, David [mailto:David.Siegel at Level3.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 12:01 PM
> To: 'Ray Wong'; nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: RE: Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?
>
> Hi Ray,
>
> This topic reminds me of yesterday's discussion in the conference
> around getting some BCOP's drafted. it would be useful to confirm my
> own view of the BCOP around communicating security issues. My
> understanding for the best practice is to limit knowledge distribution
> of security related problems both before and after the patches are
> deployed. You limit knowledge before the patch is deployed to prevent
> yourself from being exploited, but you also limit knowledge afterwards
> in order to limit potential damage to others (customers,
> competitors...the Internet at large). You also do not want to
> announce that you will be deploying a security patch until you have a
> fix in hand and know when you will deploy it (typically, next
> available maintenance window unless the cat is out of the bag and danger is real and imminent).
>
> As a service provider, you should stay on top of security alerts from
> your vendors so that you can make your own decision about what action
> is required. I would not recommend relying on service provider
> maintenance bulletins or public operations mailing lists for obtaining
> this type of information. There is some information that can cause
> more harm than good if it is distributed in the wrong way and
> information relating to security vulnerabilities definitely falls into that category.
>
> Dave
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ray Wong [mailto:rayw at rayw.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2013 9:16 AM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Level3 worldwide emergency upgrade?
>
>>
>
> OK, having had that first cup of coffee, I can say perhaps the main
> reason I was wondering is I've gotten used to Level3 always being on
> top of things (and admittedly, rarely communicating). They've reached
> the top by often being a black box of reliability, so it's (perhaps
> unrealistically) surprising to see them caught by surprise. Anything
> that pushes them into scramble mode causes me to lose a little sleep
> anyway. The alternative to what they did seems likely for at least a
> few providers who'll NOT manage to fix things in time, so I may well
> be looking at longer outages from other providers, and need to issue
> guidance to others on what to do if/when other links go down for
> periods long enough that all the cost-bounding monitoring alarms start
> to scream even louder.
>
> I was also grumpy at myself for having not noticed advance
> communication, which I still don't seem to have, though since I
> outsourced my email to bigG, I've noticed I'm more likely to miss
> things. Perhaps giving up maintaining that massive set of procmail
> rules has cost me a bit more edge.
>
> Related, of course, just because you design/run your network to
> tolerate some issues doesn't mean you can also budget to be in support
> contract as well. :) Knowing more about the exploit/fix might mean
> trying to find a way to get free upgrades to some kit to prevent more
> localized attacks to other types of gear, as well, though in this case
> it's all about Juniper PR839412 then, so vendor specific, it seems?
>
> There are probably more reasons to wish for more info, too. There's
> still more of them (exploiters/attackers) than there are those of us
> trying to keep things running smoothly and transparently, so anything
> that smells of "OMG new exploit found!" also triggers my desire to
> share information. The network bad guys share information far more
> quickly and effectively than we do, it often seems.
>
> -R>
>
>
>
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