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RE: CNN and NAWAS
by Roeland Meyer 18 Sep '01

18 Sep '01

|> From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] |> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 3:56 PM |> The rumor is it takes NORAD less than 3 minutes to issue an alert. |> The government had the means to issue a warning. I lived near NORAD, whilst working for MCI. The tour is amazing. The Space Command Center is equally amazing. Their target tracking systems and info processing capability is equally amazing, what I've seen of it. That capability exists now. Unfortunately, what is equally amazing is the poor state of the civilian systems. Hughes (HAC) should have been awarded that contract, back in 1987, rather than the IBM/Raytheon clan that fsck'd the pooch. Parts of the FAA air traffic control system are older than I am.

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CNN and NAWAS
by Sean Donelan 18 Sep '01

18 Sep '01

Sorry to do this, but I read this CNN news story and I'd like to point out the technology existed. The procedures and policies may have been lacking. http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.hijack.warning/ Military officials at NORAD ordered fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to intercept the flight, but neither the FAA, NORAD, nor any other federal government organization made any effort to evacuate the buildings in Washington. Officials at the Pentagon said that no mechanism existed within the U.S. government to notify various departments and agencies under such circumstances. Actually, there has been a mechanism to alert almost every public safety point in the nation for many years. Quoting from the NAWAS manual: > The National Warning System (NAWAS) is a 24-hour continuous > private line telephone system used to convey warnings to > Federal, State and local governments, as well as the military > and civilian population. Originally, the primary mission of > the NAWAS was to warn of an imminent enemy attack or an actual > accidental missile launch upon the United States. NAWAS still > supports this mission but the emphasis is on natural and > technological disasters. > > In todays post-Cold War environment, the threats imposed by > disasters make it imperative for all government officials to > have access to an effective and reliable means of warning the > public of impending emergencies so that they may take protective > actions. Title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief > and Emergency Assistance Act authorizes the use of the NAWAS > to support the All-Hazards emergency response mission of the > Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). NAWAS is used to > disseminate warning information concerning natural and > technological disasters to various warning points throughout > the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii and the Virgin > Islands. This information includes but is not limited to acts > of terrorism including Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) after > aircraft incidents/accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, > nuclear incidents/accidents, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, > tsunamis and winter storms/blizzards. NAWAS allows issuance of > warnings to all stations nationwide or to selected stations as > dictated by the situation. The rumor is it takes NORAD less than 3 minutes to issue an alert. The government had the means to issue a warning.

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Yahoogroups and Carnivore
by Jay Fenello 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

As of yesterday, the performance of Yahoogroup's has degraded from a couple minutes, to a couple of hours between posting and distribution. It is rumored that this is due to Carnivore being installed at major ISPs throughout the country. Any insights? Jay. +++ Jay Fenello, Internet Coaching http://www.Fenello.com ... 678-585-9765 http://www.YourWebPartner.com ... Web Support http://www.AligningWithPurpose.com ... for a Better World ----------------------------------------------------------- "A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it." -- Alvin Toffler

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Re: What Worked - What Didn't
by Mike Lewinski 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

> Are you aware of any "downside" to implementing this command ? I opted against using it on our network, after considering the consequences of having an eBGP link go down for a few seconds repeatedly (which has actually happened here twice in my memory). Under this circumstance the fast-external-fallover would probably have caused our routes to be dampened. Other than that, I think it's probably a bonus that a single very brief failure on an eBGP link doesn't require the tables to be reset. Mike > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lewinski" <mike(a)rockynet.com> > To: <nanog(a)merit.edu> > Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 3:38 PM > Subject: Re: What Worked - What Didn't > > > > > > > But speaking of BGP: what concerns me is the very long timeouts. When > > a > > > BGP router loses power, it takes minutes for the peer on the other > > side of > > > the connection to notice something is wrong and reroute the traffic. > > > > This IOS command should remedy that under most circumstances: > > > > bgp fast-external-fallover > > > > > > Mike > > > >

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Re: Yahoogroups and Carnivore
by smd＠clock.org 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

Yes, it's so much more fun to blame keystone kops or incompetent service providers for any sort of slowdown, rather than accept that scaling is hard once you've passed size large. The danger to the kops in question is that anyone who actually solves the problem of increasing both the amount of processing time per unit and the number of units processed is likely to make alot more money in private industry, still, even in the wake of the collapse of the equity bubble. Sean.

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Re: On Internet and social responsibility
by David Charlap 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

David Schwartz wrote: > > Because if American companies want to spread the speech of foreign > terrorists, that's their right. The government of the United States > should not be prosecuting them for the content of their speech. Without stating an opinon on whether or not it is right to shutdown these sites, let me point out two things that you seem to be forgetting: 1: The courts have repeatedly held that incite to riot is not a form of protected speech. A logical inference here is that incite to war is not protected either. 2: The US Constitution does not guarantee the rights of non-citizens residing in foreign nations. Even if they buy a web page from a US hosting service. -- David

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Re: Yahoogroups and Carnivore
by Steven M. Bellovin 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

In message <5.1.0.14.2.20010917155726.049e6708(a)127.0.0.1>, "Patrick W. Gilmore" writes: > >At 03:42 PM 9/17/2001 -0400, Cristopher Daniluk wrote: > >That's just a silly statement, it's a text processor/parser. It's another > >layer. Of course its going to have an effect. On the average person, I would > >venture to guess its overwhelmingly negligible, but it could very well > >bottleneck someone like Yahoo. > >My understanding is that it is no inline, it uses a "monitor port" on a >switch which duplicates all traffic. > >If that is the case, then it is not a silly statement, it is factually correct >. > >Can anyone confirm or deny the above? > Your understanding correct. They use a splitter, and put the monitoring machine on one of the legs. (The independent review of Carnivore is at http://www.usdoj.gov:80/jmd/publications/carniv_entry.htm; comments on that review are at http://www.crypto.com/papers/carnivore_report_comments.html) --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb http://www.wilyhacker.com

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RE: Yahoogroups and Carnivore
by Roeland Meyer 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

|> From: Jay Fenello [mailto:Jay@Fenello.com] |> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 12:26 PM |> |> As of yesterday, the performance of Yahoogroup's has |> degraded from a couple minutes, to a couple of hours |> between posting and distribution. It is rumored that |> this is due to Carnivore being installed at major |> ISPs throughout the country. |> |> Any insights? Carnivore is a very bad and expensive joke. The counter move is to simply move all content into a SSH or MS-PPTP VPN. Every *nix server can do both and every Win2Kserver and workstation can do the latter. Then VOIP can be used through the tunnel. Voila! ... fully mil-spec encrypted communications. All Carnivore does is burn bandwidth and provide choke-points, aka single points of failure.

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Re: Yahoogroups and Carnivore
by John Neiberger 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

I don't know about Yahoogroups, but on 9/13 I received an email from Sprint stating that a huge number of backbone routers would be down for emergency software upgrades scheduled for today. This seems at least a bit suspicious and my first thought was "Carnivore." I can't imagine why they'd have to do an emergency software upgrade on forty routers all in the same time frame. Well, that's not entirely true. I suppose if they were suffering from some buggy code and hadn't noticed it until they had already changed the IOS in all of those routers, they'd want to remedy the problem as quickly as possible. Still, it made me wonder. John On Mon, 17 Sep 2001 15:25:52 -0400, Jay Fenello wrote: | | | | As of yesterday, the performance of Yahoogroup's has | degraded from a couple minutes, to a couple of hours | between posting and distribution. It is rumored that | this is due to Carnivore being installed at major | ISPs throughout the country. | | Any insights? | | Jay. | | +++ | | Jay Fenello, Internet Coaching | http://www.Fenello.com ... 678-585-9765 | http://www.YourWebPartner.com ... Web Support | http://www.AligningWithPurpose.com ... for a Better World | ----------------------------------------------------------- | "A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men | everywhere are trying to suppress it." -- Alvin Toffler | _______________________________________________________ http://inbox.excite.com

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RE: What Worked - What Didn't
by Roeland Meyer 17 Sep '01

17 Sep '01

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