North American Network Operators Group

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Re: More federal management of key components of the Internetneeded

  • From: Richard Forno
  • Date: Thu Oct 24 00:14:22 2002

> Why isn't it against the law to (s)Yell "FUD" at Congress ?

Wouldn't do any good, they don't know any better. Few if any
Congresscritters are techno-literate -- I spent 3 years on the Hill, saw it
first hand....and it's not gotten much better.

The only language most Congresscritters understand is $$$$ and how it
relates to their staying elected by keeping their constituients somewhat
happy and impressed with their performance.

>> I don't understand how giving the US federal government management control
>> of key components of the Internet will make it more secure.

<Sean's Rant about FBI info request removed>

Remember this is the same 'cybercrime agency' that when I-Love-Y0U was
released, simply posted a NIPC warning saying "A New Virus Has Been Detected
in the Philippenes." -- I was about to make sure my immunization records
were up to date.  Even after I called them from my NOC, and told them that
the security community had already dissected the worm and there were sigs
and coutnermeasures available, they didn't update the warning on NIPC.GOV
for like 5 hours.

A screenshot of that particular example of NIPC's expertise is immortalized
here: http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/NIPC.jpg

Commentary I did about NIPC's warning capability is here, if you're
interested. http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2000-06.html

> And these are the people that are going to -=improve=- security ?

Hardly. They have a hard enough time passing information from one squad to
another within the FBI, they're never going to be able to survive and
interoperate in the Information Age against high-tech threats that move at
packet speed.  And don�t get me started about Infragard.....ugh...

> I think they should be focusing on terrorist activity, if you ask
> me.

Good idea, since they still haven't got that task down yet, either.
Remember, the FBI - before and after its 2002 reorg - is, thanks to its
internal culture, UNABLE to work well with outsiders, be they cops, the CIA,
or ISP security teams.  This has the unfortunate effect of severely torking
those folks in the FBI that are intelligent and want to make a difference,
but thanks to the system, their initiative is constrained by the 'status
quo'.  I feel sorry for some of these folks, they really do try, but the
system there prevents them from being effective, thus partially explaining
the mess the FBI and NIPC is in at the moment in responding to terrorism or
hacker threats.

re: The "DNS Attack" -- I'm hearing all this talk about DNS-on-CD that was
some sort of research project that would be used during a loss of the roots.
Anyone have any add'l info on what this is/was?

Cheers from DC,

Rick
Infowarrior.org