You should have left Jim Warren's mail headers on the article
when you forwarded it. My reply to Jim, on another list,
was that AT&T had a cable cut in southwest Missouri on Feb 8,
which took out 53 T3s and interfered with telephone traffic in that area,
according to the reports they're required to file with the FCC.
That probably also accounts for some university sites there being unreachable.
I don't know what caused the cable cut - the NSA _could_ have hired
Billy-Bob's Backhoe service to take us out, but usually it's
construction or flooding. No evidence of foul play....
Which doesn't mean it's _not_ the Reichstag Files here.
More likely, though, it's the typical pattern that
something bad happens and the Feds opportunistically try to
use it to publicize their desires for more power and control.
Look for them to ask for official monitoring at the NAPs,
MAEs, and big ISPs to track traffic flows.
In these events, if ISPs weren't tracking the TCP ports for
Trinoo/TFN/etc control systems beforehand, they can't trace
the originators of the control messages, though they might
still be able to find the cracked systems the vandals are
using to send the actual floods. So they'll want pre-attack tracking.
Of course, even finding the system that sent the control messages
may not get the vandal - they probably use another cracked system,
and connect to it using telnet/ssh etc that's not practical to pre-trace.
Look for the big ISPs to add increased spoof-proofing
and filtering options for their customers. Unfortunately,
it's difficult to do too much of this at high speeds and volumes -
routers that are pumping OC48s usually do most of the work in silicon,
and any complex filtering requires more limited CPU resources,
so it tends to be limited to the smaller edges or customer-premises routers.
It's especially tough to do anything TCP/UDP-layer on the
peering interfaces between ISPs, because those are usually large.
At 07:12 AM 02/10/2000 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Ist Herr Uberfurher Klinton up to his old tricks?
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--------------
>
>
>Let's see ...
>
>On January 27th, Clinton said he wants to make electronic "law enforcement"
>a high priority, in his State of the Union speech.
>
>By January 30th, the *always*-silent National Security Agency suddenly
>*alleges* very publicly, that its main computers -- that process covert
>communications interceptions from around the nation and world -- had
>inexplicably crashed from January 24th to the 28th.
....
>By February 8th, Missouri and Oklahoma phone systems have crashed. It
>illustrates the horrors of vile cyber-terrorists, but without bothering
>"important" people in Washington or on the East and West coasts.
>
>Now, also on the 8th, the normally *very* reliable mail-server at
>Concentric Networks -- a large national ISP -- has been refusing to respond
>for more than an hour.
>
>What better way to "prove" the need for massively expanded government
>surveillance, and create a fenzy of support for it?!
>
>Suddenly crackers seem to have become far better than any have ever been
>before. But then again -- what organization has the best computer and
>phone-system crackers in the world?! There is "No Such Agency."
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
