Re: Recent Attacks

[Barney Wolff <barney () databus com>]

My memory may be faulty, but as I recall it, this was not a prank at
all.  Jon Postel as IANA had official, legitimate authority over the
root servers, and chose to demonstrate at that moment that he had
practical authority as well.  It was at the time an important point.
I don't believe either Jon or Paul would have done anything to the
root servers as a prank.

Barney Wolff

> From: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist () ekahuna com>
> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 00:41:47 -0800
>
> On 15 Feb 00, at 13:56, Matthew_S_Cramer () armstrong co boldly uttered: 
>
> > > Paul Vixie as a prank once collaborated with Jon Postel
> > > and hijacked some of the root servers, redirected some of
> > > their answers (Internic's page?) to their own sites.  But
> > > Postel was one of the most powerful people in the 'net and
> > > Vixie is in charge of BIND, so they had a bit of an advantage
> > > over your average script-kiddie. :-)
> >
> > Interesting - now the FBI would call that prank "cyber-terrorism".
> >
> >
> > Matt
>
>
>
> Well actually I believe at the time they were saying they
> were doing an "experiment".
>
> And I suppose there's a smidgen of truth to that. <g>
>
> Of course, now that the corporate world has laid their
> claim on the net as the engine of profit, such things
> are definitely not taken as lightly as they were back
> then.
>
> Did a quick search and turned up a reference to this prank,
> in the piece Vixie wrote in memorial to Jon.  You can check
> it out at:
>
> http://www.wired.com/news/print_version/culture/story/15679.html
>
>
>
>
> Phil