Re: If you have nothing to hide

[Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

sean () donelan com (Sean Donelan) writes:

>   "ISPs to step up
>    Internet service providers also have to be more security conscious,
>    Clarke said. By selling broadband connectivity to home users without
>    making security a priority, telecommunications companies, cable
>    providers and ISPs have not only opened the nation's homes to attack,
>    but also created a host of computers with fast connections that have
>    hardly any security."
>
> Public network operators are very security conscious, about the
> public network operators network.  Should public network operators do
> things, common in private corporate networks, such as block access to
> Hotmail, Instant Messenger, Peer-to-peer file sharing, and other
> potentially risky activities?  Should it be official government policy
> for public network operators to prohibit customers from running their own
> servers by blocking access with firewalls?

Don't dismiss this concern.  We know why multipath (core) RPF is hard and
why most BGP speakers don't do it yet.  But unipath (edge) RPF has been easy
for five years and possible for ten, and yet it is in use almost nowhere.

The blame for that lays squarely, 100%, no excuses, with the edge ISP's.
Whether Microsoft or the rest of the people CERT has named over the years
with various buffer overflows are also to blame for making hosts vulnerable
is debatable.  But whether edge ISP's are grossly negligent for not doing
edge RPF since at least 1996 is not debatable.  Cut Mr. Clark *that* slack,
even if you must (righteously, I might add) blast him on other issues.
-- 
Paul Vixie