We seem to have an odd fascination with lists. From top 10 worst/best to lists to make sure to remember to pick up bread and milk on the way home (nb. must pick up milk). At any rate, I stumbled across this story this morning on Network World where Carolyn Duffy Marsan lists off the six worst internet routing attacks. Both overt and accidental.
From Network World:
Pakistan Telecom blocks YouTube
In February 2008, Pakistan Telecom inadvertently brought down the entire YouTube site worldwide for two hours as it was attempting to restrict local access to the site. When Pakistan Telecom tried to filter access to YouTube, it sent new routing information via BGP to PCCW, an ISP in Hong Kong that propagated the false routing information across the Internet.
ICANN puts root server at risk
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) screwed up in November 2007 when it renumbered the DNS root server “L” that it operates. ICANN failed to notice several unauthorized L root servers operating across the Internet until six months later. By May 2008, ICANN had all the bogus L root servers turned off.
Are there any major ones that were missed that you think should be a part of this list?
For the full article read on.
This morning customers that use the Sophos products weren’t able to get updates for a short spell. This was thanks to a “whoops” by one of the company’s ISPs.
From The Register:
Domain name system problems left some users of Sophos unable to get security updates on Friday. The same issue, blamed on a mistake by one of the security firm’s service providers rather than hostile action, left many surfers unable to access its main sophos.com website.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained that an error by one of its service providers in updating DNS settings for the Sophos.com site has permeated across the internet, and will take a little while to untangle. “Some users have experienced problems getting updates because of these incorrect settings,” he explained. “No kind of DNS cache poisoning or any kind of hacking attack was involved.”
I can well imagine that people were speculating about the possibility of a DNS attack. But, sometimes the correct answer really is the simplest one.
Ah, good ole Cisco. The company that security folks love to hate. I, on the other hand, am indifferent. I have worked with Cisco gear over the last decade+ and for routing and switching it does the trick nicely. Then that fateful day came when they found their shiny new jack boots in the front hall closet and descended on Las Vegas. They managed to leave a seriously negative aftertaste in the mouths of security researchers and hackers alike. Months later I had occasion to speak with an architect from Cisco and he offered, “We fucked up. I wish we as a company hadn’t done that.” But, the genie was out of the bottle.
The dust has settled and Cisco has learned from their mistakes. Well, at least from my perspective.
Michael Lynn was skewered by Cisco’s lawyers for his attempted presentation.
The presentation went on in a edited format. The crux of the conversation was the reverse engineering of Cisco’s IOS code which has historically been a closely guarded secret. Now, in an attempt to play in the virtual space they are opening up access to their code. Hmmm.
From Network World:
“It’s a significant step forward for us,” said Don Proctor, senior vice president of Cisco’s newly formed Software Group, at last week’s C-Scape 2007 analyst conference. “Software turns out to be a key way that we can do what [we've] been talking about for some time, which is link business architecture to technology architecture in a meaningful way.”
Cisco plans to “componentize” IOS – developing only one implementation of a specific function instead of several, depending on the image – dynamically link IOS services and move the software onto a Unix-based kernel. Cisco then plans to open up interfaces on IOS to allow third-party and customer-developed applications to access IOS services.
So, they have effectively made a turnabout in a manner of speaking. Now with this access to IOS I wonder how long until nefarious types gain a greater insight into the code? Oh right. With the writers on strike in Hollywood this is a rerun.
Tags: Cisco IOS, Cisoc IOS Access, IOS Code, Code
