In message <200209161838.g8GIcTMT079274@noc.mainstreet.net>, Mark Kent writes:
OK, so there is my point. Back in those days the network security folks would often find themselves in the same lunch line as the "ISP" security folks. And they were available by phone with just a four digit extension.
Oh it's worse than that :-). At least as late as 1987, we knew each other's phone numbers (and in some cases, network maps) by heart. My favorite personal stories of this ilk are: * c. 1986 I went into Dennis Rockwell's office (he worked down the hall from me on CSNET) trying to track down a TCP performance problem to another site. He pulled out a network map, pinged the intermediate routers (no traceroute in those days), sent a few specialized test packets, then called up the guy who managed the router (at another company) and told him his router was misbehaving and which bug was causing the misbehavior. * c. 1984 I was writing a UNIX kernel implementation of HMP (the network monitoring protocol before SNMP). I'd just gotten the kernel to start sending packets, so I sent a poll (GET) message to a local router. I got no reply, so I sent the packet again. 10 seconds later my phone rang. It was Mike Brescia at the BBN NOC. He said "Craig, are you trying to HMP poll 128.89.0.1?" Me "Yes". Mike: "You've got the bytes swapped in the HMP password field." Craig