Jacob Palme said:
<> Should IETF do anything to fight the increasing incidences
<> of net criminality? Can we do anything? Can the protocols,
<> which IETF manages, be modified so as to make it easier
<> to fight virus distribution, mail bombing, ping attacks
<> and the other ways in which people are harassing the
<> Internet?
Harald pointed to crypto and signatures. I'd add that there
really are a fair number of tools out there already to do
Intrusion Detection and/or post mortem analysis. There is
also a great deal of knowledge about how to "lock down the
house."
However, just as you can't make the horse drink, you can't
make all of the end networks install or use the existing tools
properly. I'm not sure if this is an argument for pushing the
work off onto IETF wg, or whether it's an argument for "throwing
up ones hands" ...
I think a lot of the work can and OUGHT to be done by the
various vendors -- for examples, routers should, by default,
reject broadcast pings (you could always turn it on if needed)
and mail clients and web browsers should automagically refuse
to run executable content (other than inside a "container").
Reto L.
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R A Lichtensteiger rali(_at_)activeiq(_dot_)com
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