sean@donelan.com (Sean Donelan) writes:
"ISPs to step up Internet service providers also have to be more security conscious, Clarke said. By selling broadband connectivity to home users without making security a priority, telecommunications companies, cable providers and ISPs have not only opened the nation's homes to attack, but also created a host of computers with fast connections that have hardly any security."
Public network operators are very security conscious, about the public network operators network. Should public network operators do things, common in private corporate networks, such as block access to Hotmail, Instant Messenger, Peer-to-peer file sharing, and other potentially risky activities? Should it be official government policy for public network operators to prohibit customers from running their own servers by blocking access with firewalls?
Don't dismiss this concern. We know why multipath (core) RPF is hard and why most BGP speakers don't do it yet. But unipath (edge) RPF has been easy for five years and possible for ten, and yet it is in use almost nowhere. The blame for that lays squarely, 100%, no excuses, with the edge ISP's. Whether Microsoft or the rest of the people CERT has named over the years with various buffer overflows are also to blame for making hosts vulnerable is debatable. But whether edge ISP's are grossly negligent for not doing edge RPF since at least 1996 is not debatable. Cut Mr. Clark *that* slack, even if you must (righteously, I might add) blast him on other issues. -- Paul Vixie