North American Network Operators Group
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Re: amazonaws.com?

  • From: Joel Jaeggli
  • Date: Thu May 29 14:10:55 2008
Barry Shein wrote:
On May 29, 2008 at 06:46 [email protected] (Joel Jaeggli) wrote:
> Dorn Hetzel wrote:
> > Yeah, there was a day when anyone could buy a pickup truck full of > > ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a random feed store and not attract any > > attention at all, now, maybe not. Just like port 25, it has plenty of > > legitimate uses, and some more problematic ones.
> > Equating port 25 use with domestic terrorism is specious.
> > Ammonium nitrate requires requires some care in handling regardless of > your intentions,see for exmple the oppau or texas city disasters.

And how different is that from the million+ strong zombie botnets? Who
owns (not pwns) those zombie'd systems and what were their intentions?

Well let's see. The texas city disaster is/was considered the worst industrial accident in american history. 581 people killed by an explosive yield of about 2 kilotons. The secondary effects includes fires in many of the chemical facilities in Galveston and a swath of destruction that reached up to 40 miles inland...

http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html

So no, I don't think internet attached hosts can casually equated with the destructive potential of a pile of fertilizer at least not in the context described.