On 9 Mar 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:
The US Government as been amazingly pro-active in this area, or at least some small groups have been. They've also consistently said the government can't protect the Internet. The infrastructure is owned by private companies and individuals; and industry has to work together to protect it.
The question is does industry think its worthwhile to work together?
Funny you should ask that. There was a lot of discussion on Bugtraq recently about the attacks and from those discussions another list was started to discuss formation of an "Assocation of Responsible Internet Providers" (ARIP@SECURITYFOCUS.COM). Discussion ensued regarding what the organization should be doing. There seemed to be general agreement on the idea of first creating a NOC<->NOC communication protocol/procedures(this is at the people layer, not the technical layer.) I suggested that the group develop a charter, form a 501(c)(6), elect officers, obtain D&O insurance and then proceed. I also stated that any such venture was going to require very real money to accomplish, and asked if there was anyone willing to put their money where there mouth is, and monetarily contribute to such a venture(I offered to put up a few hundred dollars.) Suddenly, the list got very, very quiet. In fact, since I posted that message, there hasn't been a single post to the list. Emperically, this suggests to me that while everyone is quick to spend countless hours expressing an opinion on mailing lists, there is nobody willing to invest in making this happen. I believe this to be such a common communication protocol and procedures for handling issues to be of great necessity and desireability. If 10% of the vast number of people that have expressed their opinions on these issues were each willing to put up a little money, we could solve this problem once and for all. So, my offer stands. If there are any individuals or organizations that would like to do something besides bemoaning the lack of coordination between providers and actually *do* something to fix it, please contact me privately. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Patrick Greenwell Earth is a single point of failure. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/