On Sat, 21 Sep 2002, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
Anyway, in our efforts to see security weaknesses everywhere, we might be going too far. For instance, nearly all our current protocols are completely vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. If someone digs up a fiber, intercepts packets and changes the content before letting them continue to their destination, maybe the layer 1 guys will notice, but not any of us IP people.
I'm waiting for one of the professional security consulting firms to issue their weekly press release screaming "Network Operator Meeting Fails Security Test." The wireless networks at NANOG meetings never follow what the security professionals say are mandatory, essential security practices. The NANOG wireless network doesn't use any authentication, enables broadcast SSID, has a trivial to guess SSID, doesn't use WEP, doesn't have any perimeter firewalls, etc, etc, etc. At the last NANOG meeting IIRC over 400 stations were active on the network. Are network operators really that clueless about security, or perhaps we need to step back and re-think. What are we really trying to protect? Banks are mostly concerned about people defrauding the bank, not the bank's customers. Banks rarely check the signature on a check. Is security just perception?