40-Gbps DDoS Attacks Worry Even Tier-1 ISPs

sturgeon and other readers let us know that Arbor Networks has released their annual survey of tier-1 / tier-2 ISP security engineers. This year they got responses from 70 lead engineers. While DDoS attacks are reaching new heights of backbone-crushing traffic — 40 Gbps was seen this past year — the insiders are also worried about emerging threats to DNS and BGP. The summary notes that "Most believe that the DNS cache poisoning flaw disclosed earlier this year was poorly handled and increased the danger of the threat," but doesn't spell out what a better way of handling it might have been. All in all, the ISPs sound a bit pessimistic — one says "fewer resources, less management support, and increased workload." You can request the full PDF report here, but it will cost you contact information. In related news, an anonymous reader passes along a survey by Secure Computing of 199 international security experts and other "industry insiders" from utilities, oil and gas, financial services, government, telecommunications, transportation and other critical infrastructure industries. They are worried too.

Comments

Re:let it collapse

[0100010001010011]

The 700 billion would have been better spent setting up a Depression Era work force. After the bridge collapse in MN we've been hearing report after report about how the current infrastructure is falling apart around us. The electrical grid is rigged together worse than some college students' cars.

Suspend unemployment. (Anyone willing and able to work but cannot find a job). Start putting everyone to work doing something. Bus them to and from a work site up to X miles from your home.[0] Every major bridge that isn't going to make it gets the full 24/7 treatment. When one bridge is done. You move onto the next one. Everything trickles down. Every one of those workers is going to need food, haircuts, a trailer to live in (while at work). Trucking industry would pick back up doing loads of construction supplies. Domestic construction equipment manufacturers would need to up production Only other domestic MADE, no other equipment (Cat, Deere, etc). Build the roads to European standards (Autobahn and such).
Give the electric companies 2 choices: Fix your own damn shit with your profits or we fix it and lease it back to you or nationalize you.

Sure there are people that are going to bitch because they're used to their handout. But handouts aren't going to help anyone. Make everyone work.

It's not perfect but it's a hell of a lot better than handing it over to a bunch of people who managed to already lose $700b.

[0].M-F you live in work housing or you work 4 - 10s or 7 on 7 off.

Re:let it collapse

[Red Flayer]

Alan Greenspan's reaction was priceless saying that he'd expected banks to take reasonable risks and not commit suicide. It was in their own interests to self-regulate but surprise surprise, greed won out.

Just to be clear...

First, Greenspan expected banks to make choices in their own self-interest... but instead bank executives made decisions that were in their own self interests. He forgot that corporations are not actual decision-makers, individuals are, and individuals tend to make the choices that are best for them, not the choices that are best for their company.

Second, given the expectation of government bailout, it was no longer in the banks' self-interest to self-regulate, since they got to externalize the risk of bad investments. It's been known for years among financial circles that any bank failures big enough to potentially unhinge the economy would be prevented by government bailout. This information influenced lending decisions.

The simple fact of the matter is that top-level decision-makers at these financial institutions made decisions to maximize their bonuses, and those of their friends. Since the bonuses were not tied to long-term health of the company, the choices made were not optimized for long-term health of the company (or the economy as a whole). Any guilt over the negative repercussions was assuaged by the knowledge that the taxpayer would step in and bail them out.

Really, it was an investor's dream -- privatize the profits, socialize the risks.

Great Explaination

[IceCreamGuy]

Most believe that the DNS cache poisoning flaw disclosed earlier this year was poorly handled and increased the danger of the threat

The Kaminsky thing? The ISPs thought it was handled poorly? How ***the fuck*** should it have been handled then? The day they disclosed publicly that there was a vulnerability, nevermind that they didn't disclose the details, they had patches out for every major DNS server and any ISP who wanted to be patched could have been. WTF?

Re:let it collapse

[Mister Whirly]

So when a small business employee gets into a car wreck on the job and accidentally kills somebody, the victim's family should be able to take not only all business assets, but the house and all personal assets of the owner?? Yeah, I can't see where that would cause any problems...