[ I'm unthreading this, because Anton didn't think to, and I wouldn't want anyone who canned the other thread to miss it. --jra ] On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 11:56:30AM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:16:16 -0500 "Anton Kapela" <tkapela@gmail.com> wrote:

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I thought I'd toss in a few comments, considering it's my fault that few people are understanding this thing yet.

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On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org> wrote:

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People (especially spammers) have been hijacking networks for a while

I'd like to 'clear the air' here. Clearly, I failed at Defcon, WIRED, AFP, and Forbes.

We all know sub-prefix hijacking is not news. What is news? Using as-path loop detection to selectively blackhole the hijacked route - which creates a transport path _back to_ the target.

That's all it is, nothing more. All but the WIRED follow-up article missed this point *completely.* They over-represented the 'hijacking' aspects, while only making mention of the 'interception' potential.

Lets end this thread with the point I had intended two weeks ago: we've presented a method by which all the theory spewed by academics can be actualized in a real network (the big-I internet) to effect interception of data between (nearly) arbitrary endpoints from (nearly) any edge or stub AS. That, I think, is interesting.

Indeed, and I thank you for it. As noted, I and others have been warning about the problem for a long time. You've shown that it isn't just an ivory tower exercise; maybe people will now get serious about deploying a solution.

To quote Bruce Schneier quoting an NSA maxim, attacks only get better; they never get worse. We now have running code of one way to do this. I think most NANOG readers can see many more ways to do it. A real solution will take years to deploy, but it will never happen if we don't start. And we want to have the solution out there *before* we see serious attacks on BGP.

Again, thank you -- it was really nice work.

--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Josef Stalin)