North American Network Operators Group

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Re: "Default" Internet Service

  • From: Matthew Sullivan
  • Date: Mon Jun 14 17:29:24 2004

Smith, Donald wrote:

First are the consumers willing to pay for a "safer" internet
DSL/dial/isdn?

Why should they have to?

I believe if they were there would be a safer service available. I have
seen several "secure" isp's fail in the last
few years. If you have any data that shows that there is a market for a
more secure dialup/DSL/isdn... please share it.

No, but it won't belong before you will find half a dozen reasons why as an ISP you will want to do it - but then it may be too late.

2nd blaming infected machines on the internet is similar to blaming your
postal carrier for bringing you junk mail and bills.

Crap

About 1/2 of all of
the large "infection" events on the internet are the result of people
running unpatched unsecured applications on their machines. The other
half of the infections I see are due to an end user opening an email and
running an attachment.

Correct

Even with a secure OS this simple method of infection will continue to work.

Correct

However you are ignoring the fact that once the machine is infected, the machine can be used by hundreds of people (skript kiddies) to damage other parts of the internet, further they can (and are) being used by organised crime to extort money out of large financial institutions and companies, and that's not to mention DDoS's on the smaller people who are just in the way.

How and when did it become the responsibility of the ISP to protect the
end users machines?
It hasn't, however the data coming from an ISPs network has always been the responsibility of the ISP.... and I would suggest if you cannot stop the endusers getting infected, then you should look at stopping those machines from abusing other machines on the internet.... If you will not do that you should not be peered.

Do ISP's get paid to protect end user machines?

No, they get paid for traffic, which is the reason some ISPs out there don't care if their customers are DDoSing anothers network.

If you want to blame someone maybe the company that provided the
insecure os that requires monthly patches to fix portions of the broken
code they sold. Or you could blame the end users who open unknown
attachments.
Yup, we've been doing that for years, and they have been fixing things as fast as possible (not always, and not until more recently) however they are making steps in the right direction, so I feel it's about time ISP's started taking some of the responsibility for traffic on their network. As far as the attachments go, education is the only way - and if they cannot be educated they shouldn't be on the Internet.

I would like a real solution to the problem. Simply blocking ports is
not successful. So I recommend 2 steps.
First buy OS's that are more secure out of the box.

That's not going to happen anytime soon, even with Microsoft starting to follow the 'right' road.

2nd Teach users NOT to click on every thing they see.

...and how are you going to do that? If you give a user a $10 account where they have full internet access they click on everything, then they get infected, their machine is controlled by someone else across the world and is used for DDoS attacks or spam (or..hacking, or...?) .. what are you going to do to educate them in the middle....? What is the ISP going to do to make sure that the enduser has been educated? What are you the ISP going to do to ensure the machine that was infected has now been disinfected...?

I don't expect you the ISP to solve all these problems, nor do I expect you the ISP to stop your users from getting infected.... However you the ISP are responsible for traffic coming from and going to your users, and most of us don't care if you want to allow your users to get infected, however we do care if you allow your customers to attack us.... Whether it be an attack in the form of spam, DDoS or trojan/virus spreading.

/ Mat