Re: Navy Marine Corps Internet hit

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Tue, 19 Aug 2003, Scott Weeks wrote:
> on the .pif, .scr, etc. attachments...)  Maybe I was just lucky.  Most
> likely, though, they did not create "security zones" to keep problems
> contained within certain network segments and not let them out to destroy
> other networks.

Luck is very important.

Like most other people I have no knowledge about how the Navy Marine
Internet works, but that won't stop me from commenting.

It sounds like a "turnkey" operation, with EDS managing everything.  They
may have 100,000 users with identical configurations (software, patch
levels, etc) in one big flat network.  A large homogeneous population is
vulnerable to a common infection.  Nachia has a very effecient scanning
and infection process, particularly if your entire network uses RFC1918
address space internally.