Re: @home: Is *anyone* really home there???

[prmoyer () EARTHLINK NET (Philip R. Moyer)]

Jim Littlefield writes:
> Unless @Home gets lots of complaints regarding a particular user, they do
> very little, if anything. Spam and open NNTP servers are the only
> complaints that they appear to act on.
>
> I am an @Home customer and was getting repeated entire port range scans
> from another @Home customer located in the next town. I blasted off a
> complaint and received nothing in return. A telephone call to @Home and
> multiple conversations with a number of "supervisors" resulted in very
> little being done. IMHO, @Home's network is poorly managed and their
> support is next to useless. Unfortunately for me, DSL is not an option at
> this time.

This is a very interesting observation.  Several months ago, when @home
service became available in our area, I looked into getting service
from them.  I am an information security consultant, so in the course
of my various engagements I need to connect to remote machines using
"nonstandard services" (like SSH oooh, aaah), sometimes portscanning
them, and sometimes conducting full-blown penetration tests.

This is strictly against the @home acceptable use policy.  It says
(I must paraphrase so they don't sue me) that any use or distribution
of security tools like password crackers, scanners, or sniffers is
forbidden.  The actual reference, if you want to check my interpretation,
is http://www.home.com/support/aup/, in the section titled "Security,"
paragraph two, last sentence.  :-)

Well, that's part of what I do for a living, with the full understanding
and consent of the target system owners.

I called the @home sales people, who passed me up several levels of
supervisor, until someone finally told me, "if that's what you do, then
you aren't welcome as an @home subscriber."

I find it interesting and discouraging that @home apparently feels free
to harbor hackers and other criminals, but will not offer services
to security professionals.  I guess we just have to mark them down as
"bad guys" until they learn to play nice on the Net.

Cheers,
Phil