RE: Recent Attacks

[Lance Spitzner <lance () ksni net>]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Starkey, Kyle wrote:

> I don't believe that this was the total objective.  I believe (and this is
> only conjecture) that their point was the actual vulnerability itself.  The
> DoS and the newly created DDos attacks are VERY simple to use and widely
> available.  I think the point was "Hey, check out this great piece of code
> that is really easy to use and the MAJOR players on the internet are still
> vulnerable."  I am hopeing it was more of a wake up call than it was
> malicious, but who knows.

I like to think that these attacks are one of the best things to ever
happen to security.  No one was really hurt (i.e. no lives were lost
and everyone is still in business), and security now has everyone's 
attention (including the President).  This was a desperately needed
wake up call.  Most of us in the security field were aware of these 
issues, but few were listening.  Now, hopefully, this will help
people focus on security and the issues involved.  Unfortunately,
media events like this are quickly forgotten :(

Lance Spitzner
http://www.enteract.com/~lspitz/papers.html