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

[jpapen () YAHOO COM (Jeffrey Papen)]

$soapbox = 1;

It's so easy to cast stones when you don't know what's going on.  It's amazing
how many arm-chair quarterbacks are on this list.

@Home is more than aware of the problems they have with their users.  They are
working on it, but the # of jerks w/ cable modems is much larger than they
abuse groups can handle.  They're adding something around 100,000 subscribers a
month!  Even if 0.1% of those are jerks, that's more new users every month
causing problems than regularly contribute to this list.

Is that an excuse?  no.  Does that make it ok?  Absolutely not.  But the fact
remains that @Home will deal with these customers and is making every effort to
get their own house in order so they can stop this network abuse.

@Home doesn't advertise kicking people off the system or banning homes from
ever having the service again for many legal/political reasons.  Because it's
not publicized, doesn't mean it's not happening.

Everyone complaining on this mailing list also assumes that their one TCPDump
will be sufficient evidence to win an expensive lawsuit if some PO'd subscriber
sues for having their service removed or being accused of something they didn't
do.  You may laugh at this, but these are the issues that @Home has to deal
with every day.  Throw 20 different cable partners in the mix, each with their
own paranoia and policies and the problem becomes that much more complex.

Everyone complaining is also making a large assumption - that the IP address
conducting the scan knows they are conducting an illegal activity.  If some
newbie with Linux and an @Home modem gets owned and starts attacking your
system, should @Home ban that user for not setting up their system correctly?

If that was the case, then 95% of their customers would be thrown out because
they don't know what they're doing.

My advice to you is that you're going to have no better luck telling @Home to
fix their misbehaving users than you will telling every college in the world to
not have rude users poking your defenses.  For that matter, if we're going to
pee in @Home's cheerios, let's throw daemon.co.uk off the net for what their
users have done.

Take matters into your own hand and secure yourself.  If you're being mail
bombed or ICMP flooded, then you have a legitimate complaint and you should
pick up your phone and do something about it.  Otherwise ignore scans.  Who
cares who knows that ports you run?  If you rely on security through obscurity,
then you deserve what you get.

Don't assume that your one email will be some magic bullet.  I'm amazed at how
many times people say "I sent an email, why didn't they do anything about it?"
Do you know how many emails @Home receives per day?  At least 50% of the
problem report emails I send to large ISPs fall through the  cracks unless
followed up with a phone call.

Everyone used to (still does) hate AOL users because they had such poor
netiquete.  @Home is the new jerk on the block because users finally have the
bandwidth and availability to make themselves a nuisance.  Why doesn't DSL have
the same complaints?  Because they don't allow their users the same freedom
that @Home does.  They block users from running their own mail servers or
having true IP-dialtone.  They're also a smaller target, each with less of the
internet population so a scan from them doesn't stand out.

My advice to everyone is, unless you have a real DOS attack, quit bitchin' and
spend that energy locking down your site.

$soapbox = 0;

- Jeffrey

--- "Maniac ." <m_a_n_i_a_c_ () HOTMAIL COM> wrote:
> I agree.
>
> I went off on a rant a while back on this list (I think) about @home and
> their lack of caring about their customers actions.  I hate to say this or
> even condone it, but maybe its time people started taking care of these
> idiots with cable modems ouselves.  Seeing how @home doesn't care and
> all....
>
> Just my $.02
>
>
> > 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.
> >
> > --
> > Jim Littlefield           "One time I went to a museum where all the
> >                            work in the museum had been done by
> >                            children. They had all the paintings up
> >                            on refrigerators." - Steven Wright
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

=====
Yahoo Network Engineering
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email: jeffrey () papen com
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