North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: What do you want your ISP to block today?

  • From: Mike Leber
  • Date: Sat Aug 30 00:40:49 2003

On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, Sean Donelan wrote:
> http://www.vnunet.com/Analysis/1143268
> > Although companies may have the infrastructure to deal with the current
> > band of worms, Trojans and viruses, there is currently a line of defence
> > that is not in place. "The problem isn't Microsoft's products or the
> > knowledge of the consumer. The problem lies in the ISPs' unwillingness
> > to  make this issue disappear or at least reduce it dramatically," said
> > Cooper.

This completely overlooks the user as the ultimate infection vector.  
Even if Microsoft never has another external hole users can still infect
themselves.  To paraphrase badly: the most dangerous part of the computer
is the nut behind the wheel.

Moore's law in on the side of virus writers that spam their viruses to
users.  As long as users only need to click on email attachments to
execute programs you can expect an increasing amount of virus spam.

> > He added that ISPs have the view and ability to prevent en-masse
> > attacks. "All these attacks traverse their networks before they reach
> > you and me. If they would simply stop attack traffic that has been
> > identified and accepted as such, we'd all sleep better," Cooper said.

Perhaps paper manufacturers should be held liable until they come out with
paper that can't be used to write down bad ideas.

Mike.

+----------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -----------------+
| Mike Leber           Direct Internet Connections   Voice 510 580 4100 |
| Hurricane Electric     Web Hosting  Colocation       Fax 510 580 4151 |
| [email protected]                                       http://www.he.net |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+