IP: IMPORTANT ISSUE Re: Recent Internet Attacks and Critical Infrastructure Protectio n

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

[ I know and hope this starts a debate . I will summarize comments and 
package them for distribution. This is a VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE djf]



> From: "Baker, Stewart" <SBaker () steptoe com>
> To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu>,
>
>
> Dave,
>
> I like Mike and Jim, but this cut-and-paste reissue of their old paper seems
> to be intended to dodge the hard question that CDT and its friends should be
> answering after the recent distributed denial of service attacks on CNN and
> other sites.
>
> The fact is that most of the recent DDOS attacks could have been prevented
> or made easier to handle if there were better authentication of machines on
> the Net.  Forged addresses are at the center of much of the mischief.
>
> So why don't we have better authentication on the Net?  Well, one reason is
> that CDT and similar groups have made it their business to attack companies
> that introduce authentication to the Net.  They've encouraged the FTC and
> Congress and European privacy bureaucrats to investigate and intimidate any
> company that introduces authentication technologies they consider
> politically incorrect.  Remember their effort to boycott Intel and Microsoft
> for the processor serial number and the GUID?  CDT and its allies obviously
> believe that anonymity on the Net needs to be protected.  Maybe so, but not
> at any price, and these DDOS attacks are only a small part of the price
> we're going to pay if we continue to let CDT politicize the deployment of
> authentication technology.
>
>
> Stewart Baker
> Steptoe & Johnson LLP
> phone -- 202.429.6413
> email fax -- 202.261.9825
> main fax -- 202.429.3902
> sbaker () steptoe com