March 2009 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Cacti Graphing
by Joseph Nzioka 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

Hi All, Has any one on this list graphed alcatel-lucent service routers succesfully using Cacti and if yes would you be kind enough to provide the base template or the how to.? -- Kind Regards ............................................ Joseph Nzioka, Cell:+254 735 452050 Cell:+254 711 968429

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Earthlink help needed
by Mike Lewinski 31 Mar '09

31 Mar '09

One of our mail servers can't talk to any of the earthlink MX servers and after two weeks of trying I've got a queue full of undeliverable mail to their subs. Previous attempts at getting help via postmaster(a)earthlink.net are unanswered. INOC-DBA has no directory entry for them. This old NANOG post (http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg01582.html) has a valid phone number but invalid extension. So I hit 0 and got a tech anyway. That tech instructed me to forward on my concerns to blockedbyearthlink(a)abuse.earthlink.net which I did, but nothing more than an auto-response has come back a week later now (and yes, I followed the instructions in the auto-responder and re-submitted in the requested format). Everything I've read indicates that if we are being blocked deliberately I should be getting a 550 SMTP error back. We do not even get a SYN/ACK back (nor ICMP unreachable/prohibited, nor RST) so no SMTP errors are generated from their servers. The MX are all pingable and traceable, so its not a routing problem AFAICT. The mailman server here has paranoid rDNS setup, does not appear on any blacklists, and has never been the subject of any spam complaints. It runs a listserv for a professional legal association which charges members a fee before they are allowed to join the list, so the possibility of unwanted third parties being subscribed is very near zero. TIA and sorry for the noise. We tried having an Earthlink subscriber work this from the other angle. All she got was "Earthlink has been blocking port 25 for years you should now this by now!" Mike Lewinski -- mike(a)rockynet.com POTS: 303-629-2860 INOC-DBA: 13345*mjl

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Re: Earthlink help needed
by grinch＠panix.com 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

I, for one, appreciate this type of feedback. Rgs, ------Original Message------ From: Mike Lewinski To: NANOG Subject: Re: Earthlink help needed Sent: Mar 30, 2009 5:15 PM Within an hour of making this post I received a call from a very helpful engineer at Earthlink. The problem has been identified and a resolution is in the works. Mike Mike Lewinski wrote: > One of our mail servers can't talk to any of the earthlink MX servers > and after two weeks of trying I've got a queue full of undeliverable > mail to their subs. > > Previous attempts at getting help via postmaster(a)earthlink.net are > unanswered. INOC-DBA has no directory entry for them. This old NANOG > post (http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg01582.html) has a > valid phone number but invalid extension. So I hit 0 and got a tech > anyway. That tech instructed me to forward on my concerns to > blockedbyearthlink(a)abuse.earthlink.net which I did, but nothing more > than an auto-response has come back a week later now (and yes, I > followed the instructions in the auto-responder and re-submitted in the > requested format). > > Everything I've read indicates that if we are being blocked deliberately > I should be getting a 550 SMTP error back. We do not even get a SYN/ACK > back (nor ICMP unreachable/prohibited, nor RST) so no SMTP errors are > generated from their servers. The MX are all pingable and traceable, so > its not a routing problem AFAICT. > > The mailman server here has paranoid rDNS setup, does not appear on any > blacklists, and has never been the subject of any spam complaints. It > runs a listserv for a professional legal association which charges > members a fee before they are allowed to join the list, so the > possibility of unwanted third parties being subscribed is very near zero. > > TIA and sorry for the noise. We tried having an Earthlink subscriber > work this from the other angle. All she got was "Earthlink has been > blocking port 25 for years you should now this by now!" > > Mike Lewinski > -- > mike(a)rockynet.com > POTS: 303-629-2860 > INOC-DBA: 13345*mjl > Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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RE: The Confiker Virus hype and measures
by Skywing 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Actually, I can't remember the last cable/DSL ISP that I had seen solicit offers for service that didn't offer some level of free bundled AV. Most conventional AV software is oriented towards checking files for "badness" before the access is allowed, which doesn't really apply to the ms08-067 infection vector so much - at least, not in my experience with what most AV software does. That is more the domain of signature-based IPS's. But I think the real morale of the story is that end users want to see their computer like an every-day person sees a car: as a tool that works to get from A to B, and not what a mechanic would see a car as. Users don't want to have to deal with the nitty-gritty details of maintenance. Hence, why automatic updates are a good thing (*if implemented properly) in some cases (i.e. where there's no sysadmin to manage things). The AV folk have done that for a long time and it's been reasonably well accepted. - S -----Original Message----- From: Stasiniewicz, Adam <stasinia(a)msoe.edu> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 09:11 To: nanog(a)nanog.org <nanog(a)nanog.org>; 'Gadi Evron' <ge(a)linuxbox.org>; 'Joe Blanchard' <jbfixurpc(a)gmail.com> Subject: RE: The Confiker Virus hype and measures To the main stream media: Please leave your tin foil hats at the door... To my fellow NANOGers: I look at this virus from two perspectives. First the home computers (and small businesses without any real IT staff). And second the larger organizations with dedicated IT staff. Home Users: Many will agree that a large percent (>50%) of home computers are infected with some sort of malware. Everything from tracking cookies, to spam drones, to botnet clients. Home users are often too cheap/lazy to get antivirus/firewall protections. And many are scared to get updates from Microsoft because of some unrealized danger this might pose. As I see it, the virus is adding at most 9(?) million to the probable 175 million (350/2 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_broadband_users> ) malware infested hosts out there. In fact, it will probably be much less than that, as the people who are getting infected by this virus, are probably already affected by other malware. Everyone Else: If SQL Slammer has taught us anything, it is the importance of patch management and firewalls. And the unending stream of new malware has also taught us the importance of anti-virus software. With all the media hype and removal tools being made, there is no good reason any IT shop should be affected in any meaningful way. Invariably we will hear the stories of places that do get affected, but I doubt it will be anything overly large. So from a network operational perspective, unless the virus author decides to launch a DDOS on a single target (and one is either that network or its upstream) I predict this will have little, if any, effect. My $0.02, Adam Stasiniewicz -----Original Message----- From: Gadi Evron [mailto:ge@linuxbox.org] Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 7:44 AM To: Joe Blanchard Cc: nanog(a)nanog.org Subject: The Confiker Virus hype and measures Joe Blanchard wrote: > Anyone have a copy of this? Would like to analyze it and understand its > propagation. > > Thanks > -Joe I'm sure someone sent you a sample by now. As to the malware itself... I haven't personally been following conficker as I've been busy with other issues (as much as possible, anyway, with all the hype it's hard to escape), but I've been asking questions. I can try and speak on the matter from what I've learned by asking. Conficker is a real problem, but will the world end on April Fools? The answer I gather to be the most accurate is: "The conficker threat will be exactly the same as it is today, on April 1st." Perhaps putting a date on the threat makes people feel more comfortable. What if something happens on April 3rd? Whether we would be warned or not, we'll all likely ignore it if April 1st comes and goes quietly. As to the unknown, the author's mind, who can really tell what they will do come the 1st? But some of the hype I've seen is truly ridiculous. I am sure some of the protected hosting companies sold quite a bit with their "we defend against conficker" products. Is conficker a problem? Yes. Can we potentially face hardship on the 1xt? Yes. Is the rest complete bull? Yes. Gadi.

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Verizon fiber cut?
by mm_202 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

There seems to be a major fiber cut affecting New Jersey, (South Plainfield area). Its been down since yesterday morning. Our carriers (Paetec and Level3) say that its a Verizon fiber. Has anyone else heard anything on this?? Thank you, Sergei.

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iBGP Scaling
by tt tt 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Hi List, We are looking to move our non infrastructure routes into iBGP to help with our IGP scalability (OSPF). We already run full BGP tables on our core where we connect to multiple upstream and downstream customers. Most of our aggregation and edge routers cannot hold full tables and it's certainly not possible to upgrade them. Is there any reason why we shouldn't filter iBGP routes between our core and aggregation layers (we plan to use route reflectors) or should we be look at using a private AS number per POP? Thanks Dave

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Oddly, this has been a complaint
by Joe Blanchard 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Not that I care one way or another, but since I've gotten 20+ complaints. going to www.whitehouse.org yields something else. I know I know, perhaps old news. Should I just redirect or is our DNS corrupt? Darn it Thanks in advance

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RE: Oddly, this has been a complaint
by Joe Blanchard 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Opps my bad sorry for the static. gov/org I should have seen that. Sorry again.

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cnn.com - Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
by Tony Patti 29 Mar '09

29 Mar '09

I hope that today's cnn.com article cited below meets the criteria of sufficient "Internet operational and technical issues" pursuant to NANOG AUP criteria #1 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html?_r=2&hp Tony Patti CIO S. Walter Packaging Corp. tony(a)swalter.com March 29, 2009 Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries By JOHN MARKOFF TORONTO - A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded. In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved. The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware. Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama's Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York. The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama, the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China, Russia and the United States, and other parties use sophisticated computer programs to covertly gather information. The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to light in terms of countries affected. This is also believed to be the first time researchers have been able to expose the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of this magnitude. Still going strong, the operation continues to invade and monitor more than a dozen new computers a week, the researchers said in their report, "Tracking 'GhostNet': Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network." They said they had found no evidence that United States government offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian Embassy in Washington were infiltrated. The malware is remarkable both for its sweep - in computer jargon, it has not been merely "phishing" for random consumers' information, but "whaling" for particular important targets - and for its Big Brother-style capacities. It can, for example, turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room. The investigators say they do not know if this facet has been employed. The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been determined. Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found that specific correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama's organization. The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama's office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities. The Toronto researchers said they had notified international law enforcement agencies of the spying operation, which in their view exposed basic shortcomings in the legal structure of cyberspace. The F.B.I. declined to comment on the operation. Although the Canadian researchers said that most of the computers behind the spying were in China, they cautioned against concluding that China's government was involved. The spying could be a nonstate, for-profit operation, for example, or one run by private citizens in China known as "patriotic hackers." "We're a bit more careful about it, knowing the nuance of what happens in the subterranean realms," said Ronald J. Deibert, a member of the research group and an associate professor of political science at Munk. "This could well be the C.I.A. or the Russians. It's a murky realm that we're lifting the lid on." A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea that China was involved. "These are old stories and they are nonsense," the spokesman, Wenqi Gao, said. "The Chinese government is opposed to and strictly forbids any cybercrime." The Toronto researchers, who allowed a reporter for The New York Times to review the spies' digital tracks, are publishing their findings in Information Warfare Monitor, an online publication associated with the Munk Center. At the same time, two computer researchers at Cambridge University in Britain who worked on the part of the investigation related to the Tibetans, are releasing an independent report. They do fault China, and they warned that other hackers could adopt the tactics used in the malware operation. "What Chinese spooks did in 2008, Russian crooks will do in 2010 and even low-budget criminals from less developed countries will follow in due course," the Cambridge researchers, Shishir Nagaraja and Ross Anderson, wrote in their report, "The Snooping Dragon: Social Malware Surveillance of the Tibetan Movement." In any case, it was suspicions of Chinese interference that led to the discovery of the spy operation. Last summer, the office of the Dalai Lama invited two specialists to India to audit computers used by the Dalai Lama's organization. The specialists, Greg Walton, the editor of Information Warfare Monitor, and Mr. Nagaraja, a network security expert, found that the computers had indeed been infected and that intruders had stolen files from personal computers serving several Tibetan exile groups. Back in Toronto, Mr. Walton shared data with colleagues at the Munk Center's computer lab. One of them was Nart Villeneuve, 34, a graduate student and self-taught "white hat" hacker with dazzling technical skills. Last year, Mr. Villeneuve linked the Chinese version of the Skype communications service to a Chinese government operation that was systematically eavesdropping on users' instant-messaging sessions. Early this month, Mr. Villeneuve noticed an odd string of 22 characters embedded in files created by the malicious software and searched for it with Google. It led him to a group of computers on Hainan Island, off China, and to a Web site that would prove to be critically important. In a puzzling security lapse, the Web page that Mr. Villeneuve found was not protected by a password, while much of the rest of the system uses encryption. Mr. Villeneuve and his colleagues figured out how the operation worked by commanding it to infect a system in their computer lab in Toronto. On March 12, the spies took their own bait. Mr. Villeneuve watched a brief series of commands flicker on his computer screen as someone - presumably in China - rummaged through the files. Finding nothing of interest, the intruder soon disappeared. Through trial and error, the researchers learned to use the system's Chinese-language "dashboard" - a control panel reachable with a standard Web browser - by which one could manipulate the more than 1,200 computers worldwide that had by then been infected. Infection happens two ways. In one method, a user's clicking on a document attached to an e-mail message lets the system covertly install software deep in the target operating system. Alternatively, a user clicks on a Web link in an e-mail message and is taken directly to a "poisoned" Web site. The researchers said they avoided breaking any laws during three weeks of monitoring and extensively experimenting with the system's unprotected software control panel. They provided, among other information, a log of compromised computers dating to May 22, 2007. They found that three of the four control servers were in different provinces in China - Hainan, Guangdong and Sichuan - while the fourth was discovered to be at a Web-hosting company based in Southern California. Beyond that, said Rafal A. Rohozinski, one of the investigators, "attribution is difficult because there is no agreed upon international legal framework for being able to pursue investigations down to their logical conclusion, which is highly local."

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Fiber cut on Irish Sea
by Ken Gilmour 29 Mar '09

29 Mar '09

Hi There, Since we use a vendor of "the vendor" of two Irish sea submarine cables I am wondering if anyone has first hand information on the fiber cut this morning? Does anyone have a status update on what is happening? I am getting some Chinese whispers going on here. Thanks! Ken

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