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Should the Internet Be Secure By Default? (esecurityplanet.com)

darthcamaro writes: There are lots of tools and different secure protocols that could be used by internet service providers to embed security into the fabric of the internet, making the internet secure by default, but that's not something that Facebook's Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos wants to happen. Instead of security by default, his view is that carriers should be neutral and let malicious traffic do whatever it wants.

"I believe strongly in the end-to-end principle, I think we should have neutral carriers in the middle and it should not be the responsibility of ISPs to secure the internet," Stamos said in a press conference at the Black Hat USA conference last week.

Slashdot reader Darth Technoid disagrees, calling a lack of security "the Original Sin of the Internet," and speculating that Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe "thought that future technology would resolve the issues." What do other Slashdot readers think?

Should the internet be secure by default?

154 comments

  1. Secure this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The internet can not be secure if the carriers are not neutral.

    1. Re:Secure this by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      In an insecure world the best security so far is end to end encryption. Allowing or relying on the ISP to provide the security is just setting a security on the link for that ISP, but when it goes to the backbone it's lost, so is the next ISP.

      Unfortunately not all end services that we use are secure because they include data from other sources, often ads embedded in web pages. And the web browsers we use today allows for cross-contamination. This is how sites today detects ad-blockers, they see that the cross-contamination fails.

      There are also other types of security, DNSSEC is one that should be applied. But some ISPs interfer with it.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re: Secure this by dougdonovan · · Score: 1

      another simple question with a simple answer. Yes.

    3. Re: Secure this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should note that it isn't the internet that is secure... It is the hosts ATTACHED that are secure.

      The communications are completely controlled by the hosts. The "internet" is just a communications path. That path can ALWAYS be intercepted - whether encrypted or not; but that is up to the hosts - not the path.

  2. It would never work... by MikeDataLink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If they had built encryption in from the beginning it would have been obsoleted long ago. Would you still want to be running WEP? Then we'd all have to upgrade our routers every year to stay on the latest encryption that hasn't been compromised. Having endpoint to endpoint encryption is the right answer.

    And if that's not enough, we need an open and free internet and we need carriers to not be messing with any of my bits and bytes.

    --
    Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
    1. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spot on. Related reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_principle

    2. Re:It would never work... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 5, Funny

      My ISP has met the proposal half-way: depending on the situation, they don't do anything with the zeroes but they might filter the ones.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:It would never work... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The encryption would just be upgraded, same as it was with WiFi, SSL and the like.

      But the more important point is that it would set the default assumption that every protocol needs to enforce privacy. HTTPS would be the original spec, not HTTP.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:It would never work... by Arnold+Reinhold · · Score: 4, Informative

      I attended a presentation on the ARPAnet in the early 1970's and I asked about encryption. I was told they were not including encryption because doing so would mean the entire project would be classified and they very much wanted to avoid that (this was a few years before DES was released). They also said that DOD intended to encrypt each communication link (link encryption) in its network, which would also protect against traffic analysis.

    5. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free by default.

      If we aim for security over liberty we will get neither.

    6. Re:It would never work... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Lies. RFC 3514 solved this problem long ago, but big government colluded with big business as usual to prevent it from happening. Corporations are the worst. It was so they could spy on us as a prelude to 9/11, which was in planning. Google wtf 7 learn the truth.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    7. Re:It would never work... by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

      If it had been, hopefully it would have been implemented in a modular way, fully knowing that obsolescence would occur.

      --
      There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
    8. Re: It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... and that proves the Faceborg chief's point, as much as we might dislike (ok, loathe) the source. WEP, like WPA2 that followed it, is a _local_ network security protocol. DNSSEC is an _application_ protocol. What they have in common is that they're not centrally controlled by a monopoly service provider, a transnational corporation or national government.

    9. Re:It would never work... by Rockoon · · Score: 0

      sigh...

      (a) stop modding yourself up with your sock puppet
      (b) "IP" is the original spec, not as you claim "HTTP"
      (c) SJW means what you codified into law that it means

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    10. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From RFC 3514: "Correct functioning of security mechanisms depend critically on the evil bit being set properly."

      Who's gonna set the evil bit?
          evil bit
          evil bit
      Who's gonna set the evil bit?
          Tra la la la la.

    11. Re: It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't disagree, but I do want to point out that the broad case of Volume based attacks are UNIVERSALLY applicable against, and universally deployed against, any platform that allows free speech.

      Anon usenet? Spammed to death.
      Email? Have to use corporate nets like Microsoft or Google or spammed to death.
      Free speech forum? All have to use cloudflare or go offline from ddos
      Torrent is partially tolerable but only with exceptional maintenance, and takes forever to get something new on that network

      An open network or standard just says "this is a framework that can exist under a corporate umbrella, try anything else and it will be hammered to death by companies or governments lr activists.

      Or activist corporatist governments....

    12. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering how bad router firmware is, they should be updated monthly.

    13. Re: It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An ISP that has developed and-gates, but is looking for the or-gate technology?

    14. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The internet was started in design in the 1960s. Encryption was deemed a munitions, thus not usable. It was so bad that not even HOOKS to add or remove encryption were permitted.

      It wasn't until 1992 that this was revoked. So the internet development could not have been done had it included encryption from the beginning.

      Even then, encryption depends on the HOST. Not the communication medium. So it had no purpose to exist.

    15. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would have been obsoleted? Like Netscape Navigator? Win95?

    16. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the 1960s it was just assumed that the only people connected to the internet were going to be US military, government, and a few science and engineering students at big universities. Who needs encryption by default when we're all on the same side? The idea that ordinary Americans (let alone the mob and the "red Chinese") were going to be on the same network too would have seemed absurd.

    17. Re:It would never work... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      IT fascinates me how many people take RFC 3514 seriously.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    18. Re:It would never work... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Back then, encryption would also have burdened the systems considerably. Modern systems make light of encryption.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    19. Re:It would never work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Were you born stupid, or did it take practice?

  3. The S in IoT is For Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes. It should be secure by default. Otherwise you get the shit-shows like IoT that's been a botnet maker's dream...

  4. "The Rise of the Stupid Network" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.rageboy.com/stupidnet.html

    which is over twenty years old, explains the concept well. A good analogy is how X Windows has survived because it didn't enforce policy.

  5. Who defines what is secure and what isn't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whoever you let define what is 'secure' could and likely would control all information allowed on the internet.

    1. Re:Who defines what is secure and what isn't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Secure means "completely free of Microsoft Products and PHBs".

      Is that clear enough?

    2. Re:Who defines what is secure and what isn't by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      I define "secure" for my own communications.

      "Secure" means that nobody can understand or modify my communications without my express intention that they can do so.

  6. Original intent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The original intent of the Internet isn't what we see here today. It was supposed to be a military and government communications system to withstand a nuclear war - and used by universities. Meaning, security wasn't even thought of because it was supposed to be a closed system.

    I bet they cringe at the .ru domain! Or the .cn one!

    And if a new internet is created - somehow - hackers will find a way to infiltrate it because that's what they do: find weaknesses that no one thought of.

    1. Re:Original intent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't have a 'secure' internet - for what is secure and what is insecure? What traffic is dangerous? You can't filter out a ddos-attack like the slashdot effect, for example. So 'secure internet' won't happen even if we all agreed on whatever draconian measures the proponents wants.

      Also, the internet is safe enough as-is. I have had machines on the net (no firewall in front) since the nineties - and this has not been hard. A couple of incidents only over 20 years - one was a bad passwd on an account, the other an unpatched dns server. Of course these machines don't do excessively stupid things like smb over the public interface. When ssh is all there is, there is not much malware that can attack me. (And rate-limiting take care of the automated bruteforcing attempts.)

      Dangerous websites - seriously? Show me one. I don't run particularly vulnerable software - i.e. nothing microsoft. I have yet to see checksums mismatch due to a web-based intrusion.

  7. LOCK IT UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Give everyone a key with his name on it. If he does bad, take away his key.

    1. Re: LOCK IT UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone worth their salt would generate a separate key and use that for their true intentions. The 'normal' key would get used for paying bills, shopping for 'normal' things, etc.

    2. Re: LOCK IT UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The government defines "bad" to mean "unChristian", "unCommunist", "intolerant", or "unIslamic".

      Also which government? Does North Korea get to issue identities? If not, what is to stop that threat from being used against Russia or China?

  8. Of course not! by SCVonSteroids · · Score: 1

    How would we get all this entertaining news otherwise?

    --
    I tend to rant.
  9. The net cannot be secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Security is the responsibility of the client. The net cannot be trusted. Either we block malicious traffic such as Facebook's, or it does whatever it wants.

  10. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Answer = No

  11. Go back to X25 by phayes · · Score: 5, Informative

    The revisionists claiming that those who designed the Internet were at fault for not predicting future deficiencies should return to using the OSI networks like X25 that were indeed conceived with every imaginable contributor's input -- but that were so unwieldily that they lost out to IP even with the weight of national every national telecom operator behind them. The AT&Ts the France Telecoms, the BTs, etc, all told us that IP was badly adapted to real world and that it would be quickly replaced with "proper" and "secure" OSI networks.

    Not encumbering IP with "solutions" to every future possible problem is in large part why we are using IP today, & not X25.

    --
    Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
    1. Re:Go back to X25 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are a cow. MOOOOO! MOOOOO! Moo says the cow! YOU PACKET SWITCHED COW!!

    2. Re:Go back to X25 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ha! The joke's on you, buddy. I'm a Circuit Switched cow.

    3. Re:Go back to X25 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Global software defined, virtual OSI network over IP. Gotta love them layers!

    4. Re:Go back to X25 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      X25. Say goodbye to streaming multimedia. No more netflix, youtube, voip. All of it wont work in the modern sense on X25.

      Some technologies die for a reason.

    5. Re:Go back to X25 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... why we are using IP today ...

      When the (public) internet was created, there was no standards war like video tape or high density laser discs experienced. Only IP was supported and there's never been a story on how that happened. The internet didn't depend on the arrival of TCP/IP though.

      When my modem connected to a X25 PoP, I had only the Telnet program. A lot of that may have been from the lack of HTTP services and the failure of X25 netizens to offer a public page for everyone to view. Tel-cos still believed that communication backbones were for voice: The cloud services that made the internet work; search engines (Ask Jeeves, AltaVista), WebMail (Hotmail, YahooMail), file repositories (Tucows, HappyPuppy) - didn't exist in X25 cyberspace. The public 'release' of the internet allowed several things to happen at once, which wasn't possible in the restricted X25 cyberspace.

  12. Define "security." by ErikTheRed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Security means different specific things in different specific contexts. Security in transit, which seems to be what this is focusing on, is mainly a defensive step against nation-states. Most of us don't worry horribly about organized crime tapping Internet backbone switches - for now that's the domain of intelligence and military organizations. At that point the entire conversation veers off from science into philosophy - the proper role of the state (if any) in monitoring communications for stuff it doesn't like. This tends to break down better on the newer and cleaner authoritarian / libertarian axis than it does the older and more muddled conservative / progressive axis. Authoritarians want more control so that they can implement and enforce their agendas. Libertarians want less control because they (generally) believe that authoritarian structures - even those created and begun with the best of intentions - eventually get taken over by thugs and then are used for totalitarian purposes.

    --

    Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
    1. Re:Define "security." by blindseer · · Score: 1

      I'm reminded of an old joke on how different military branches define "secure". Imagine each branch of the military given an order to "secure that building".

      Army: The front door is blown off its hinges and a recon team storms in. Bad guys are killed or captured, while good guys are given water and blankets. A tank is parked out front, 24/7 patrols performed on the perimeter, and snipers posted on the roof.

      Navy: The exterior is given a fresh coat of paint. Broken windows are repaired. The inside is scrubbed top to bottom. Burnt out light bulbs replaced, and fire extinguishers refilled. The lawn is mowed and weeds pulled.

      Air Force: The building owners are contacted and a ten year lease is signed, with option to purchase before lease expiration.

      Variations on this joke replace Army with Marines, or Navy sometimes included with Marines, or Air Force replaced with Coast Guard, etc., etc. The joke always starts with some branch nearly destroying the building, the next restoring it to like new condition, and the third making some sort of financial arrangement.

      You want the internet to be "secure" then what does that mean? Does it mean keeping the "bad" people out"? Does it mean keeping it available and reliable? Most times keeping something "secure" is not in opposition to the other definitions, but this may not always be true. Just the idea of keeping "bad guys" out can be problematic. For example I recall a hospital that decided it needed "security" so guards were posted at the entrances. What this did though was discourage people to seek services there, such as just going in to warm up and grab a cup of coffee. The staff wanted people to come in for this but "security" saw that as a problem. So side doors were left unlocked so the homeless could come in for a few minutes and warm up but it also let criminals in that were stealing drugs and supplies.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    2. Re:Define "security." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When you BAKE IN security, you BAKE OUT freedom.
      My vote is freedom, every single time, regardless of the "costs", I can deal with those.
      Without freedom, you have nothing, and you never will.

    3. Re: Define "security." by KGIII · · Score: 1

      One of my favorite jokes...

      If you're in the Army, what do you call that thing with the rotors on top?
      A chopper.

      If you're in the Air Force, what do you call it?
      A helicopter.

      And if you're in the Navy?
      A whirlybird.

      And what do Marines call it?
      *points up in the air* Ook! Ook!

      (I spent eight years enlisted in the Marines. It paid for my education.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    4. Re:Define "security." by UnderCoverPenguin · · Score: 1

      My vote is freedom, every single time, regardless of the "costs", I can deal with those.
      Without freedom, you have nothing, and you never will.

      I agree

      When you BAKE IN security, you BAKE OUT freedom.

      What's your definition of "security"?

      "Secure" can mean "robust". Like TCP/IP and associated routing protocols can route around damage to provide a practical level of reliability.

      "Secure" can mean resistant to wiretapping. Encryption, both end-to-end and link-level, helps with that. In fact, it also helps provide robustness.

      I think most people would agree these are helpful to freedom, so are desirable.

      Of course, "security" can also be used as a tool for oppression. A balance is needed.

      --
      Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
    5. Re: Define "security." by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      You military types call windmills all sorts of strange names!

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    6. Re:Define "security." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Libertarians want less control because they (generally) believe that authoritarian structures - even those created and begun with the best of intentions - eventually get taken over by thugs and then are used for totalitarian purposes.

      And Obama was (reportedly) upset with Snowden for sullying his legacy. I don't know about y'all, but Trump seems markedly more Thuggish than Obama, or even W. Of course he also seems more Clownish. I'm sure the FBI that classified the Insane Clown Posse as an organized criminal outfit is getting a lot of laughs out of Snoop's controversial clown/trump/mock-assassination music video.

      We are in so much trouble.

    7. Re:Define "security." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The point is if end-users should depend on some external, independent contractor for security. However security is defined,you want it to be controlled by the hospital, or by the military branch which needs it. Why should end users have less rights than ISPs? Can end users run their own email server, for example? Can end-users be security managers of themselves?

  13. Be careful what you ask for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, "the internet" shouldn't be "secure by default", whatever that means. It's the transport.

    All devices connected to it, ought to be. But even that is hazardous to demand. Before you know it, you get "secure boot", "trusted computing", "DRM", and all you're left with is an entertainment console (tablet, set-top box, what-have-you) that you get to rent at inflated prices so you can "consume content" and otherwise get to STFU and like it, consumer.

    I for one welcome our botnet eradicating corporate overlords to control our every move, and charge us for it, too.

    1. Re: Be careful what you ask for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Security as are many issues is relative. The world is filled with spectrums upon spectrums of nuanced issues. And click bait journalism forcing discussion of the issue into bipolar modalities. Yawn.

  14. Encrypted Secure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I understand the sentiment, but the risk mitigation is low to none. Intercepting or hijacking encrypted traffic is done all the time, encryption is even used for C2 communications. Whether you have end to end encrypted communication, or even double-blind encrypted communications this does nothing to secure the end points at which that encryption occurs. Concerns around exposure and possible hacking, are much more likely user side followed by server side, than to be intercepted mid stream.

  15. It's tunnels all the way down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Dumb network, smart edges" is the key difference between the internet and the many networks it has replaced and is replacing. To give up that principle would just give rise to another dumb network, possibly first running tunnels through the "secure" internet and using it as dumb pipes. The internet is the evolutionary opponent to the "intelligently designed" protocols. It's winning for a reason.

  16. Sure it should be secure by default. by hey! · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you can define what that means. But that's not even what the guy is saying. He's saying ISPs shouldn't be in charge of securing customers computers or traffic.

    If you imagine what a "secure by default" Internet would do for you, it would protect you from any unintended consequences from your actions. Now imagine how good ISPs would be at doing that for you. Most of them can barely run their own networks competently, much less understand their customers' businesses.

    ISPs certainly have a role in responding to certain kinds of cyber attacks, like DDOS, or attacks on DNS infrastructure. But they don't really have the ability to protect customers from themselves.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Sure it should be secure by default. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ISPs should secure their networks so that traffic claiming to originate on the outside doesn't come from the inside and traffic claiming to originate from the inside doesn't come from the outside.

      End to end ecryption of content is the responsibility of the end points. If an ISP wants to send extra money and encrypt all traffic within its networks (in case they have someone sniffing traffic) all the better.

  17. Securing the InterNet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, that's a good idea... until you try to decide WHO gets to doing the securing?

    It's like "which Christianity should we adhere to in the USA?"

    So... who do you want to have in charge of Internyet security? The Taliban, perhaps? ISIS? The Fundamentalist Baptists? The Prosperity Gospel Preachers?

    As Bruce Schneier has asked multiple times: Who do YOU trust? (Flashes back to the title sequence from "Crusade"...)

  18. Moot by eyepeepackets · · Score: 1

    As the Internet currently exists, it simply cannot be "secure by default." To have such a system you need hardware and software designed from the ground up to be secure, but the current system was designed to be robust, which is pretty much the other end of the spectrum from secure. Everyone at every level of use would have to start all over again.

    A better solution might be to have separate networks for those who need such high levels of security; this would be cheaper and far more likely to happen. Still going to be expensive, but it might be a better -- as in possible -- solution.

    --
    Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
  19. You have to adress the issue in Full by BlueCoder · · Score: 1

    The problem you not only need "security" but it also needs to be updateable. There is no foolproof software and or complex protocol proofs. There are all sorts of assumptions made which change all the time compounded by implementation errors and outright bugs. It may all be based on logic but you can't guarantee what makes sense today will make sense in twenty years.

    So you have to be able to update software and complex digital hardware. That is simply impractical. You can write a law saying pi=3 but that doesn't make it so. By it's very nature it would require some level of all software and hardware being open source such that the security routines and how they work could be changed. Not going to happen.

    Everyone though that OSI model would go beyond layer 3. That there would be standard dynamic libraries for end to end encryption and that programmers wouldn't need to be that involves in the minutia of the design. Instead what we got was a role your own and linking to available static libraries idiocy. And https.... nuf said.

    I think what is needed is that governments should require programmers both to guarantee a specific lifetime guarantee for where there should be minimums depending on the software. The software should be bonded by an insurance/review company (which will have the code) for that period of time. Programmers and publishers need to be liable for the quality of their products where money is exchanged. There needs to be minimum standards and review.

    1. Re:You have to adress the issue in Full by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Programmers and publishers need to be liable for the quality of their products where money is exchanged. There needs to be minimum standards and review.

      Right after you write about how software should need to involve money.

      If programmers are going to be responsible for the quality of their products, who'd be a programmer? I'm not paid anywhere near enough to provide personal legal responsibility.

      If you're comparing it to more traditional engineering, consider this. A professional engineer signs off on a bridge design. The bridge is built according to spec, and carries traffic without any problems. Then some bad guys show up and use bombs to bring the bridge down. What happens to the PE? Now, consider communications software. The professional software engineer signs off on it, and it works just fine for a long time. Then some bad guys show up and use bugs to destroy the security. What should happen to the PSE? Most communications software failures have been just that, the result of deliberate attacks.

      Minimum standards and review will do no good. They will hold up innovation, they will fail to provide secure software, and they will raise the price, if they're reasonably possible to follow. If not, we get a software developer being personally ruined because an attacker was smarter than he or she was.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  20. Monetization by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1

    ... I think we should have neutral carriers in the middle ...

    No way the current crop of ISPs are going to allow this to occur. It will destroy their plans to charge tolls on any and every aspect of the Internet.

  21. Secure in the sense of what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Making the network "secure" in the sense that packets sent from A to B go from A to B, by well designed routes, rather than being intercepted or redirected and rather than being easily hijacked in other ways, would seem good. Ideally this would make surveillance simply fail to work.
    Somehow having the network "understand' what is going on and blocking undesirable traffic sounds like just the kind of thing the Chinese government (and others) are trying to do...censorship all over.
    In practice, though, specifying who "A" and "B" are gets tricky and arguably if you want to make surveillance fail to function, you must not have immutable network mechanisms that connect "A" and/or "B" with particular carbon units (people).
    It seems better that the immutable identification be handled at end points, so people know directly when they authenticate and it cannot be done for them.

  22. oh, those silly medieval peasants! by doctorvo · · Score: 1

    Slashdot reader Darth Technoid disagrees, calling a lack of security "the Original Sin of the Internet,"

    Oh, those silly medieval peasants and all their famines! Why didn't they just eat at KFC?

    Seriously, when the Internet was developed, cryptography was in its infancy, connections were physically secured, and the backbone consisted of 16 bit processors with up to 32k of core memory, and I mean core memory. When the web was developed, it was still not really possible to encrypt everything.

    Long term, encryption alone isn't the right thing anyway. The next generation shouldn't just have encryption but also peer-to-peer service, decentralized naming, etc. People are trying to build that kind of internet using blockchain technology. You should support it.

  23. This time the Facebook Man is right by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    The internet is supposed to be a simple pipe. You open and close the 'valves' at your end. Leave everybody else alone.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  24. Who is going to help the little guy? by sjbe · · Score: 1

    If you can define what that means. But that's not even what the guy is saying. He's saying ISPs shouldn't be in charge of securing customers computers or traffic.

    That's fine for larger corporate customers who at least in principle should be able to manage to secure their networks. But less sophisticated customers hugely out number the sophisticated ones so there HAS to be some mechanism for helping them to keep their little network and devices secure. If this isn't the ISP then who should it be? I like the idea of smart edges and a dumb network but we cannot assume that every edge has a tech savvy sysadmin on the end of it.

    1. Re:Who is going to help the little guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The local computer shop. That is exactly what they are for.

    2. Re:Who is going to help the little guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can't ride a bike? You'll fall off. -> learn
      Don't lock your house? Eventuall you'll have a naughty visitor. -> lock your doors
      Don't give a fuck about security? You won't have any. -> understand what that WPA checkbox is.

      > so there HAS to be some mechanism for helping them to keep their little network and devices secure.

      There is : don't buy obsoleting crap. Good router? Forget the d-links, get something like the Turris Omnia. (ie with long term vendor support)
      IoT? No cloud connection for every doorknob, at most an optional local replacable server.

      This is an economic problem...

    3. Re: Who is going to help the little guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At the end of the day, if Joe citizen gets ddosd 24/7 for months on end it wouldn't matter what devices they had connected. Is it the responsibility of the ISP to be able to provide the service they advertise even if the customer is a flaming Putin critic? Is it the responsibility of the US govt to help the ISP in such a case? Does free speech matter enough to be entitled to costly government defense? Trump will save us, lol.

    4. Re:Who is going to help the little guy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That simply requires decent edge routers. It still doesn't depend on the ISP.

      And thinking it is "fine for larger corporate customers"... the evidence is that THEY cannot keep their network secure at all.

  25. End-to-end is the only way to secure by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    Having endpoint to endpoint encryption is the right answer. And if that's not enough, we need an open and free internet and we need carriers to not be messing with any of my bits and bytes.

    I agree but I'd actually go further and say that the only way to secure a network is with endpoint-to-endpoint encryption because how can anyone trust all the network providers in between? Once you send your packet out you have no control where different networks will route it and if it is routed through somewhere like the US, even if that is not the final destination, you know that the government there may potentially look at it.

  26. Security or Privacy by YuppieScum · · Score: 1

    Pick one - you can't have both.

    --
    This sig left unintentionally blank.
    1. Re:Security or Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ISP's should not be doing anything really. What should be happening is that the customer premise hardware should be be the demarcation point between the "real internet" and "the local network", if the local network needs to connect to another local network over the internet, then it is up to the customer premise equipment to make that connection, and secure it.

      This however is the problem, is that if you want privacy, you can not let the CPE store, log or transmit (*cough cloud*) the credentials in the clear to establish these connections in the first place. Hence the dilemma of letting malware run rampant, and doing nothing because it's cheaper and less legally ambigious.

      This push from Google and browser vendors to SSL everywhere is the problem, not the solution. By mandating every site be SSL enabled, this actually causes malware to go from easily monitored to impossible to monitor. Meanwhile making all CDN systems utterly useless since now nothing can be cached. So now you can't just blacklist hashes of bad files, now you actually need to download the file to the computer or CPE scan it, and then let the browser render it. So now the internet becomes even slower. Nevermind the ass-backwards non-compliance of browser vendors not supporting full H2, only SSL H2.

      The real fix is to push the liability where it belongs. The DMCA was not designed for dealing with malware. Bring out a "anti-cyberwarfare" legislation that does the following:
      1. Require all machines on the internet to be directly IPv6 connected, and discontinue IPv4 usage by NAT systems. (eg IP4 devices may persist behind a dual stack router, but ip4 traffic is not passed to over the consumer CPE unless there is a VPN endpoint.)
      2. Empower ISP's to block access to addresses that are reported as malicious without notifying the customer first, give the customer 24 hours to fix the problem, no "three strikes", just if the customer doesn't fix the problem their CPE will be disconnected until a repair specialist can be dispatched.
      3. Hold equipment manufactures liable (IoT and CPE) if the device can not be secured, require 100% refunds on equipment that becomes a malware zombie.
      4. Require CPE to whitelist devices and their classifications (eg mobile phone, fridge, microwave, cordless phone, computer, game console, security system) so that if a device has been compromised, the ISP can push a routing block to the device and the customer can be notified that X device has been disabled due to compromise.

      Essentially manufactures are only liable for NOT updating equipment, ISP's are only the messenger, but the customer may or may not own the CPE, so if the ISP owns the CPE, then the ISP is liable for securing the CPE. If the customer owns the CPE, then the customer is liable for securing the CPE, and the ISP can only block the CPE if the devices behind it aren't IPv6 visible. As far as financial or criminal liability, customers and ISP's would only be liable if equipment is not repaired before being reconnected, and fines would vary by how much damage is continuously being caused by the device.

      I repeat, liability lies with the equipment manufacturer IF and ONLY IF they fail to update the hardware.

    2. Re:Security or Privacy by knorthern+knight · · Score: 1

      > The real fix is to push the liability where it belongs. The DMCA was not designed for
      > dealing with malware. Bring out a "anti-cyberwarfare" legislation that does the following:
      >
      > 1. Require all machines on the internet to be directly IPv6 connected, and discontinue
      > IPv4 usage by NAT systems. (eg IP4 devices may persist behind a dual stack router, but
      > ip4 traffic is not passed to over the consumer CPE unless there is a VPN endpoint.)

      How many shares in various manufacturers do you own? The reason that the changeover is going slowly is that people don't want to junk nearly new IPV4-only equipment and pay for IPV6-compatable replacements. Right now my ADSL ISP sells IPV6-caoable router/modems. However, I have an almost-10-year-old Thomson SpeedTouch 546 that's still going strong. I want to run it into ground. I'm not an Apple-fanboi who lines up outside the store every year or two for the latest, newest, shiney toy.

      > 2. Empower ISP's to block access to addresses that are
      > reported as malicious without notifying the customer first,

      Wow, straight out of the DMCA; shoot first, ask questions later...

      https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
      https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
      https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

      > 3. Hold equipment manufactures liable (IoT and CPE) if the device can not be
      > secured, require 100% refunds on equipment that becomes a malware zombie.

      Actually, that should be standard consumer protection legislation, i.e. "product not fit for purpose".

      > 4. Require CPE to whitelist devices and their classifications (eg mobile phone,
      > fridge, microwave, cordless phone, computer, game console, security system)

      WTF?!? I am *NOT* white-listing "internet-enabled" crap. It's *MY* effing home network, and *I* decide which devices do/don't get to communicate withe internet. Actually, I'll go out of my way to not buy "internet-enabled" crap in the first place. And, oh yeah, I've got UPNP disabled on my router/modem.

      --

      I'm not repeating myself
      I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
    3. Re: Security or Privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      According to industry DMCA floggers, none of us really own the equipment we buy. We just have a "license" to use it. That's why there's at least one "right to repair" bill kicking around Congress (the Librarian of Congress recently made a time-limited admistrative determination in favor of repair of some goods). To me patentband copyright holders shouldn't have it both ways. If there's no right to repair they should be strictly liable for all actual damages flowing from _their_ failure to make and maintain a safe and fuctional product.

    4. Re:Security or Privacy by marka63 · · Score: 1

      How many shares in various manufacturers do you own? The reason that the changeover is going slowly is that people don't want to junk nearly new IPV4-only equipment and pay for IPV6-compatable replacements. Right now my ADSL ISP sells IPV6-caoable router/modems. However, I have an almost-10-year-old Thomson SpeedTouch 546 that's still going strong. I want to run it into ground. I'm not an Apple-fanboi who lines up outside the store every year or two for the latest, newest, shiney toy.

      So apart from the modem/router, what equipment do you think needs to be replaced when you turn ON IPv6? The answer is NONE. Turning on IPv6 doesn't mean you have to stop using the IPv4 equipment that you have. I've had IPv6 turned on for 15 years now. The house has a mixture of dual stack equipment and IPv4 only equipment. When I have a choice when buying new equipment I've got stuff that supports both IPv6 and IPv4 vs IPv4 only. All the equipment would support IPv6 but manufactures in certain market segments have been slow to provide IPv6 capable equipment. So, no your argument is not supported by facts.

      Basically you are spreading lies.

      Note: there were IPv6 capable ADSL modems 10+ years ago. You could have bought one so you would have been ready when your ISP finally came into the 21st century.

    5. Re:Security or Privacy by JohnFen · · Score: 1

      I disagree. You can't have security without privacy.

      What is incompatible is convenience and security.

  27. internet security--no absolutes by gordona · · Score: 1

    No such thing as absolute security or zero risk. The best strategy is to assume that nothing on the internet is safe and proceed accordingly. No one security strategy will work. Everyone using the internet should apply some kind of layered security depending on the value of what they want to protect. Then there are the bots that may not necessarily attack your machine but act as infection vectors and instruments of DDoS. Mitigating these things pretty much depends on how well the user is educated. But most users can't be bothered event to change the default credential of their devices or use password vaults for lengthy random passwords. So does this mean they should be protected from on high? That probably wouldn't do any good if the user isn't educated and concerned. Accessing the internet is convenient and security tends to interfere with that.

    --
    "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
    1. Re: internet security--no absolutes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Password vaults can't be trusted because most are proprietary and store on remote servers, to "sync" between devices.

      The best defense is an encrypted text file. It never touches the network, and if you're not an idiot, you can re-encrypt it using better keys as algorithms improve. You'd just need to do it offline and (ideally) on an air-gapped computer.

      Smart cards are pretty neat as well, and can generate passwords you can't know, protecting you from litigation.

    2. Re: internet security--no absolutes by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      And the problem with not using a password vault sort of thing is trying to use multiple strong passwords on different devices. Life isn't simple.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  28. Yes, but not by embedding it in the network by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem with embedding security protocols in the network itself is the same one we've seen with network capacity: the providers have little incentive to upgrade once they've invested in the initial roll-out. If we embed security at the level of the ISPs and backbone providers, we'll have a massive problem when that security is inevitably broken (whether by malicious action or simply advances in computing power making the algorithms it uses obsolete). We'd also likely see major abuses, either by laziness (your Linux OS isn't supported, we won't allow it to connect) or greed (good-bye routers, you'll have to connect computers directly for security to work and that means paying per computer to connect them). Good-bye having your own domain, for security all email has to be routed through your ISP's mail servers which only support your ISP's email addresses or you'll have to use webmail interfaces which also put you at the mercy of a mail provider (eg. no S/MIME signed/encrypted email unless your mail provider supports it and you give them your private key). And in general I distrust any claims that ISPs and backbone carriers will implement any kind of security correctly, they won't even implement current security measures like spoofed-address filtering.

    And what kind of security would we gain? This idea can't protect us from malicious actors gaining network access, ISPs can still sign up customers and there'll always be ISPs who can be fooled by false IDs or who won't look too closely at the background of a customer offering them money. It can't protect us from false identity claims, see above. It can't protect us from malicious content, we've already seen that in the way new exploits get past software designed for the sole purpose of detecting malicious content.

    I'm fine with the network enforcing things like default encryption of traffic, but it should be a case of IP-level protocols requiring endpoints to encrypt traffic (eg. all IPv6 traffic requires AH and ESP or the routers will reject it). Authentication should be done directly between the parties that need to authenticate, eg. your email provider issues x.509 certificates for it's users certifying they're who they claim to be (or at least own the address they're using), DNS registries issue certificates certifying that an email provider or mail server operator controls the domain name they're using to send email and so on. Example: if I'm operating my own mailserver for silverglass.org, I'd create my own master issuing certificate and get it signed by either my domain registrar (who'd be using a certificate signed by the registry) or the .org registry saying that my certificate is good for issuing certificates within the silverglass.org domain. Then part of turning on a new mail user would be me issuing them a certificate valid for the email addresses they've asked for. I'd also be issuing the server certificates for my own mailservers. During email handling (receiving a message from my server or delivering a message to it) one check would be "Is this server's certificate valid for the relevant domain for the message?". When you signed or encrypted email messages, you'd do so using a certificate I'd issued to you (saying "This is the true owner of the email address sending this message.") or another one issued by a party who knows your identity (eg. one from your employer saying "This is really our employee and he's shown us ID proving he's really X."). And as far as malicious content goes, well, we already have AV software in use but I've found that the only people who don't have a problem with malware are the ones who refuse to directly handle content from outside or unknown/unexpected sources. The only solutions I have are a) use less complex formats that don't require hairy error-prone code to parse and b) run programs that access that content in a VM that doesn't have unmediated system access (most OSes now are capable of running lightweight VMs or containers). No, languages won't solve the problem of vulnerabi

    1. Re:Yes, but not by embedding it in the network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And in general I distrust any claims that ISPs and backbone carriers will implement any kind of security correctly, they won't even implement current security measures like spoofed-address filtering.

      s/like/such as/. i.e. that is not a one of many equals issue, but rather a pretty big f'n deal. Let's talk more about the FCC's alleged DDoS attack and secret anti-DDoS measures while on topic...

      I'm fine with the network enforcing things like default encryption of traffic, but it should be a case of IP-level protocols requiring endpoints to encrypt traffic (eg. all IPv6 traffic requires AH and ESP or the routers will reject it)

      I'm not. Some traffic does not need to be encrypted. Fetching weather temperatures and forecasts do not need to be encrypted. Certain classes of video game data do not need to be encrypted. Talk all you want about low overhead, but you aren't the kind of person that notices the difference between 15ms and 150ms latency issues in 60fps twitch games. Even so, the general idea that all data needs or should be encrypted is wrong. Unfortunately it's a kind of wrongness where I understand some positive intent beneath the surface, but that just makes it worse. These are all spectrums. It's not encrypted versus not-encrypted, it's what kind of encryption, what class of embedded processor is required to en/decrypt with what kinds of latency and memory footprints, etc. Once you accept the spectrum-nature (shades of gray, nuance) of the problem space, then you can begin to talk about the right kinds of solutions. But anyone who talks about the issue pretending such complexity nuance spectrums aren't a hugely important factor for the solution, is on a path towards making things worse, not better.

    2. Re:Yes, but not by embedding it in the network by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 1

      Problem: permitting unencrypted traffic in the general case pretty much breaks all encryption since it permits intermediate nodes to force a state where encrypted connections are "not supported". Since unencrypted connections are supported, that gives ISPs et. al. the ability to tell you to just use a supported (unencrypted) connection. The goal is to force a situation where no intermediate node can legitimately assert that no encryption stronger than some level is allowed, which requires making encryption of some level or another mandatory across the board. See the removal of null encryption from SSL/TLS for a detailed analysis. It's acceptable to permit null (identity) encryption as an option, but only by implementing the whole system such that both client and server have to be expecting null encryption and agree to it for it to be effective and if either end won't agree to go that low the network is still required to support that.

      SSL/TLS allowed a situation where only a maximum strength was specified and any node could force a maximum no higher than the minimum and the system would still work. What's needed is a system where the endpoints specify both the maximum they can support and the minimum they'll agree to, and any attempt to set a maximum lower than either end's minimum not only causes the connection to fail but is a clear violation of the standard (leaving ISPs without an excuse for not supporting a minimum equal to the maximum strength in the standard).

      It's strange, but it's the only way to operate in a universe where you never know if you're being too paranoid, only if you weren't paranoid enough.

  29. Another analogy by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 1

    Should the roads be secure by default?

  30. Yes and no by hord · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yes I want an internet that is secure by default. No this does not involve the carriers. I personally think this starts with distributed, federated identity meaning that your presence on the internet can be known to others but only to others you trust. Think BitCoin but for identity.

    For example, imagine you made your own authentication realm that was just a presence on the internet. You would create identities within it that represent you and people that you trust along with this trust relationship. It would also store data regarding your interactions with others in some way. This could then be exported by you under your supervision to other entities that would use it to determine if they trusted you or not. With cryptographic protocols and fingerprints you would be building a long-term history of trusted actions much like how we interact face-to-face.

    The goal would be to remove identity from places like Facebook or Google. OAuth, X.509, PGP/GPG, and some other technologies either get us close or do parts of this right now. It's just not in an easy-to-use cohesive bundle that you can stand up on a mobile phone. My idea would also be unwelcome at commercial sites unless they are truly willing to negotiate attribute release. Ideally I'd like something like 2-way EULA that allows me to know and alter what data these companies collect on me and how they use it.

    Until we start treating the internet like a real place where real people interact in real ways I'm not sure we'll be in the right frame of mind to solve these issues.

    1. Re:Yes and no by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Yes I want an internet that is secure by default. No this does not involve the carriers.

      This right here! There's been lots of talk about security by design or security by default, but none of it has ever involved the carriers or middlemen. I think the OP fundamentally misunderstood the debate.

    2. Re:Yes and no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... remove identity from places like Facebook or Google ...

      The whole point of Facebook and other social networks, is saying "Here I am, come find me". There's no point having an anonymous identity when people want to be found. Enforcing "cryptographic protocols and fingerprints" will just allow Facebook and friends to enforce their "real name" policy so much easier. Your policy will work only when one can "create identities" that do not connect or reveal the existence of alternate identities. How many online identities should the federal government supply? There will be one for government, one for insurance and healthcare, one for banking and shopping, one for work, one for family, one for social networking; perhaps one for miscellaneous communiques. Even with this model (7 identities), every businesses will know 2 of those unlinked identities.

      Then there's the user experience: Logging in/out of each identity to keep in-touch with the rest of the world will be tedious. An identity aggregator, like an email client, needs to ensure the work identity can't be used for a person in the 'family' identity address-book. (That is, the address-book restricts the identities allowed to write to a person: Why doesn't email have this already?)

    3. Re:Yes and no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This.

  31. More useful by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It would be far more useful to have another Internet with no advertising at all even if we had to pay for it. Like Fidonet was.

    You can't actually find stuff on the Internet any more, because the first 2,500 search results do not even contain the search terms you used, but things you might conceivably been thinking of buying if you were someone else in a parallel universe.

    If you want "secure" as in privacy you might want to write it on paper and carry it there in person. I would suggest you avoid putting it in an electronic format of any kind.

    You might also wish to buy a tin foil hat from my Ebay shop - in case the thoughts leak from your brain.

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    1. Re:More useful by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      Sounds like someone's lost their google-fu

    2. Re:More useful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It would be far more useful to have another Internet with no advertising at all even if we had to pay for it.

      Except people wouldn't. The vast majority of what we take for granted is supported by a model of advertising because we don't use the internet for a single thing. If I only wanted to get news from one paper I would subscribe to that paper. I don't and I sure as hell won't be paying $1 to 1000 different people every month.

      You can't actually find stuff on the Internet any more,

      You misspelt "I". Don't project your inability to use the internet on everyone else. There is far more information out there in a far more easily accessible manner with far better search tools than there ever was before. I have no desire to ever go back to the "old" internet, and advertising has nothing to do with the content or our ability to search for it, other than being an enabler for more content.

    3. Re: More useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      From a usability standpoint, search engines are misleading. Just type what you want and hit Enter. Easy, right? Sure, unless you run into namespace collisions. For example, if you want to learn about the Go or Rust programming languages, typing just 'go' or 'rust' will give you completely different results. Add 'programming' or 'language' and you might find a home page.

      Then there's language overlap. Someone searching for silly baby videos that say 'gaga' will have to be more specific if they aren't looking for Lady Gaga. Or how about unit conversion? Pounds are both a measure *and* a currency. You might want to know the cost of an item in the Zelda series. Rupees are real currency, so that will complicate things as well.

      Since most data can be organized into linked hierarchies, an approach like what DMOZ was can work out. Of course, it requires some smart curation to become useful, but people said that of Wikipedia as well and yet people continue to rely on it.

      Search engines aren't intuitive and return mixed results most of the time. SEO and ad involvement have made them even less useful. If you have to learn an entire sublanguage to get the most out of a search engine, the engine has failed.

      Half the time I don't even bother searching, because even with specific keywords I'm trawling through profit-seeking bullshit.

    4. Re:More useful by YuppieScum · · Score: 2

      even if we had to pay for it.

      I don't know about you, but I've been paying to use the internet since the early 90's...

      --
      This sig left unintentionally blank.
    5. Re:More useful by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      A long history of subscription based media (newspapers, magazines, etc) says that people would be willing to pay for valuable content.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:More useful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You probably need to research alternative search engines, yes google inundates you with adds and poor results now, luckily not all search engines have gone this way. Google now relies on people knowing no better to maintain its user base.

    7. Re:More useful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Of course they would until the point of saturation.

      Subscription based media survived on dedicated interest in specific topics. The internet is not that, not at all. The internet is a wealth of all information, and the vast majority would disappear if we forced it down this path.

      While you're at it, it's worth remembering why many of these subscription based media (especially generic ones covering wide topics) have failed recently, and why there are still survivors (mostly limited to very specific topics).

    8. Re:More useful by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      it's worth remembering why many of these subscription based media (especially generic ones covering wide topics) have failed recently,

      Mainly because you can get the information for free.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    9. Re:More useful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Not at all. Many forms of information have always been available for free. The big difference is now the breadth of information available, and I say this as someone who still subscribes to a few quality sources of very specific and exclusive pieces of information.

    10. Re:More useful by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      ok, why have subscription based media been failing recently then?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    11. Re:More useful by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Competition. When I was young, we had two newspapers in our city, and perhaps half a dozen good news magazines available (I stuck to three). My parents could afford to pay for as many of these as they liked, and so we got both newspapers and Time magazine for news. Nowadays, there's a lot more than eight sources of written in-depth news readily available, and I tend to skip from source to source. Which three news sources should I follow, to the exclusion of others?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    12. Re:More useful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It's losing on economics. A lot of subscription based media is incredibly light and generic. It either lacks depth or lacks coverage for it's value. Media which retains great quality and depth are the ones that are surviving. Media that forces people to compliment itself with other media the fails.

    13. Re:More useful by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I think you need room in your theory for periodicals like Cosmo and National Enquirer.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    14. Re:More useful by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Both of those cater to wide breadth of information targeted at a very specific audience.

      It doesn't need to be "good" in our eyes to be "valuable" in someone else's. But if you every read them you'll find they diversified their interests a lot over the years, and their parent companies even tried to expand the target audience (which failed spectacularly).

      Here help prop up a media conglomerate:
      https://www.fragrantica.com/pe...

  32. The major problem is not in the middle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The job of ISPs is to deliver packets quickly, not to waste time encrypting, an exercise that would be bound to disappoint because governments will insist on a clear stream, and they are one of the biggest threats.

    But encryption is not security. We already have great end-to-end encryption (and don't governments hate it?) The weakness comes at the two ends. Saying that the Internet should provide security for us is like saying banks should provide financial responsibility for us, or that roads should provide safe driving.

    Secure Internet comes from well written programs. Well written programs can be secure even though the whole world is looking at the data streaming past and trying to modify it for fun and profit.

    Newall

  33. Security is ephemeral by nature by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    The big mistake that so many ppl believe that TRUE TOTAL security is possible. It is not. The reason is that new approaches to defeat a security will be found. ALWAYS.
    What is really needed is the ability to change security quickly.
    For example, the DOD recently asked for ideas on how to secure the net and communication as a whole. With plug-gable architecture that can negotiate with the other side on what protocol and what settings, is the only possible solution.
    Likewise, for IOT and with our appliances at home, there should be a 'button' that connects between say a POE from the applice and can then deal with wifi, or zwave or nuwave or blue tooth, or simply IPv6 over cat5. Down the road, if the house is updated, then the 'button' is changed.

    And anybody that believes that the net can be 'secured by default' is not really into security, but is just a PHB.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  34. Original Sin? by John.Banister · · Score: 1

    The phrase "Original Sin" isn't applicable. The technology for packet switching predates the technology for the encryption Darth Technoid would like to be applied to the packets. If you want to talk about making a transition from where we are now to something different, you can't just say "secure by default." You have to be very specific about the design of the technology for where you want to end up and then about the transition process to get there from where we are now. Otherwise, it's like asking "should all school lunches come with universal health protecting pills for free." Whether or not you agree is irrelevant if the pills don't exist.

  35. Please define "Secure"... by MindPrison · · Score: 1

    What is a "secure" internet?

    Secure for whom and against whom? If we let the government define what is safe and secure for us as citizens, we might be in for a totalitarian authoritarian run type of internet.

    We're already fighting viruses and worms, a "safe internet" won't secure against that, this is what we do on OS level to protect our computers, and that needs updating all the time - nothing is ever going to be 100% secure.

    But if you mean security against pr0n, hate-mail, cyber bullying, fake news and whatnot - you need to start on citizen level - not censoring the roads, blocking countries and communication - that's borderline dictatorship. Education is the way forward, not censorship.

    --
    What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
  36. Disagree with premise by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

    Years ago, in mostly adoring interviews with Vint Cerf and Bob Metcalfe about security, I asked each of them how they screwed up so badly on security.

    They didn't. Jonathan Postel screwed up when he wrote RFC 821.

    By early 90's inaction to correct this was no longer Jon's fault. Today given 35 years of time having elapsed on a network with billions of users inaction is a "sin" anyone who can write a program that compiles is now on the hook for.

    They both didn't think that mattered quite as much as I do. Thus, I feel that the lack of security design is the Original Sin of the Internet.

    It really doesn't matter.

    Most operators don't route packets over random anonymous physical links they know nothing about nor do they partake in BGP sessions in a similarly unqualified and unfiltered manner. Operators are not perfect. They can be influenced by error, indifference, poor judgment, saboteurs and governments just the same. A certain amount of trust and competence among operator community enables the Internet to function at all (e.g. Reasonably successful chance of global delivery of packets from peer A to peer B). It just isn't expressed in any field of any IP layer protocol header nor is it enabled by fancy algorithms. Security is enforced physically by professional relationships and aligned business interests.

    I don't see that happening any time soon, what with IoT DDoS bots, increasingly massive data hacks and so on.

    Blaming the Internet itself for these things is like blaming baseball bat manufacturers whenever someone decides to wield them as bludgeons.

    My thought is that the Facebook CSO is wrong, in that end-to-end security requires eternal vigilance at all levels of the stack and through the system.

    The point of end-end security is minimization of what is required to be in the trusted path and still have a system remain trustworthy. Trusting operators with unaligned interests is nonsensical. Attempting to secure everything means your wasting massive amounts of resources that can be better focused on shit that actually matters increasing likelihood of mission failure.

    On global scale there is simply no viable alternative to E2E nor is there a substitute for tools to practically enable users to create and manage their own trust relationships amongst themselves "for better or worse".

  37. Not just about networking. Software matters, too. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The security of a network is irrelevant if the software using it is insecure. That's why we won't have real security until all software is written in a provably safe language like Rust.

    Rust builds on the legacy of languages like Ada and Erlang. It doesn't treat safety as an afterthought, like languages like C and C++ do. The Rust language, compiler and Code of Conduct work together to guarantee that Rust code doesn't have thread safety flaws. That's why we need to rewrite more of our software in Rust.

    Mozilla has taken the lead and is rewriting parts of Firefox in Rust. Now it is up to Google to start using Rust for Chrome.

  38. Forty years ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CPU Processing power was quite expensive at the time, so it's not surprising that security was not as strongly considered as after-thought would have it.

  39. Not secure, metadata-resistant by Kjella · · Score: 1

    IMHO the biggest weakness of the current Internet is that every packet must contain the full source and destination. I'd like it to be more like a Russian doll-style, every node on the source side should only give a reference and the destination should be unwrapped layer by layer. So if I want to send a packet from 1.2.3.4 to 5.6.7.8 my node should send to 1.2.3.x and only relay to 1.2.x that "someone" from 1.2.3.x wants to contact 5.x with an ID, from 1.2.x it'll relay to 1.x that someone from 1.2.x wants to talk to 5.x, then 1.x will relay to 5.x that someone from 1.x wants to talk to a 5.x node, 5.x will decrypt and find 5.6.x, 5.6.x will decrypt and find 5.6.7.x, 5.6.7.x will decrypt and find 5.6.7.8. I'm sure there's a lot of complications involved, but it would make breaking a single link much less valuable.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:Not secure, metadata-resistant by gweihir · · Score: 1

      I can tell you have zero understanding of how modern router technology works. You also have zero understanding of the hundreds of proposals going into this and similar directions that failed because they were not feasible without essentially killing performance completely. You still find such papers submitted to conferences, but most of the community has realized around 10 years ago that it cannot be done.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re: Not secure, metadata-resistant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then there should be an easily-findable paper that thoroughly trounces it instead of some vague statement from a nobody on the 'state of the community'.

    3. Re: Not secure, metadata-resistant by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, if something is possible there's usually a paper (often behind a paywall) that says how to do it, but if something is impossible that information is likely to be scattered.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  40. Want to do a job right? Do it yourself. I did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: Better in efficiency & abilities vs. browser addons (does far more for far less) APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

    Ads/script/malware rob speed/security/privacy.

    Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

    Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

    Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirect (99.999% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + lighten DNS load & resolve faster from local system RAM!

    * Via what u NATIVELY have in the FASTER kernelmode IP stack!

    APK

    P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

    1. Re:Want to do a job right? Do it yourself. I did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jack ass, why don't you make an ARP table engine next? It would be even more effective.

    2. Re:Want to do a job right? Do it yourself. I did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't you instead of just being an unidentifiable anonymous stalking little troll pest? I suspect you don't have the skills. All you are is hotair windbag blowhard talk!

    3. Re:Want to do a job right? Do it yourself. I did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't they what? We are all waiting for you APK but thanks for showing the world that you still can't construct a cogent thought. We all know you lack any skills as all you have managed is an idiotic hosts "engine" crap. Everyone has heard all of your lines before so just stop posting we don't need to hear them all another 200,000 times as all you do is waste electrons that could be put to better use, like mining bitcoins on a farm of Apple II machines.

  41. Re:Not just about networking. Software matters, to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Nobody gives a shit about Rust. Rust doesn't fix LOGIC issues.

  42. This is a really, _really_ dumb question by gweihir · · Score: 0

    Because the Internet cannot be "secure by default", unless you forbid everything, make all computers closed and unhackable and make writing software a capital crime. Of course, that needs to be done globally.

    While there are some fascist tendencies in that direction, they have zero change of succeeding in this regard, fortunately.

    The real solution is that commercial vendors must be made accountable for the insecure and often unpatchable crap they put out there. As soon as that happens, the problem will essentially go away except for minor incidents that do not really matter.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  43. Re:Not just about networking. Software matters, to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I used to think that n-gate (http://n-gate.com/) was being kind of harsh regarding Rust and the Rust community, but fools like you make me think now they are pretty much spot-on.

  44. Look to Natural State by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Two people standing in a field having a conversation - that's the default human condition. Are there eavesdroppers? Are their communications subject to interception? Can somebody demand that somebody follow them around and write down everything they say or demand that all of their conversations are relayed via a biased third party?

    All of those are "no", so all of those things are violations of the default human condition (what some call "human rights" though that unnecessarily complicates matters). The violations themselves are unethical, so there's no need to look further for political theories.

    Human technology should reflect basic human ethics and work to maintain, if not improve, the default human condition, so, yeah, the Internet should at least enable communications that are secure by default, if not necessarily require them.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    1. Re:Look to Natural State by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      The default human condition, before technology, was everyone in the town knew everything about everyone else.
      Empires were raised and toppled by spies - If you needed to know what went on behind closed doors, you put a person behind those doors to listen.

  45. No. by viperidaenz · · Score: 0

    If the internet was a proprietary, closed system, sure. Maybe.
    But it's not. You don't control every router on the internet. They're run by millions of individual people/companies, under hundreds of different legal jurisdictions.
    Trying to make it secure is a fools errand.

  46. Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of course this royal ass wants this. It's so that he can force everyone to collectively pay for their ads. Same with netflix and spamazon. They want your ISP, and therefore you (cost passon), to eat the bill for their bandwidth regardless if you use netflix or not. Stop supporting net neutrality. The useful provisions are there to con you! Separate them out!

  47. Trust, but Verify by Tom · · Score: 1

    The whole point of security is that I can verify it. If I can't, it is not secure, period.

    Putting the carrier in charge means I can't. When they turn of encryption and authentication during nightly maintenance and forget to turn it back on - nobody will be the wiser.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  48. Leave it by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 1

    Let applications decide what needs security, as it always was.

    The principal of a tool doing one job the best it can is still a good paradigm.

    Internet transit providers should only worry about about providing transit.

  49. Re: Not just about networking. Software matters, t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're making the rust community look bad. It's a good language IMO, but enforcing memory safety doesn't prevent every type of error, especially not with things as delicate/complex as security.

  50. Re: Not just about networking. Software matters, t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Rust's Code of Conduct is better served as toilet paper. If you have to explicitly codify the expected conduct of your peers, then it's clear that those people can't conduct themselves appropriately and should just be ejected from the project.

    I will never have a Code of Conduct for my projects. If you can't act like a decent human being, don't contribute to it.

  51. Define "security" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In the early 1990s, there was a battle between heavily locked down set-top devices, which used phone lines for content and the Internet. Thankfully the Internet won out.

    Imagine if the "secure" element (secure as in keeping jailbreaks from happening, not secure as in keeping the bad guys out) won:

    We would have plenty of forums... but it would be like Prodigy, where you don't submit a post, but request a moderator to look at your stuff, and if he/she pleases their own political leanings, they might allow it to go on there.

    Email? Sure. Pay the postage stamp.

    Of course, you will be charged by the hour for the time you are online.

  52. The Internet Should Be More Sure By Default by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine if the world managed air traffic the same way it manages cyber traffic? Each airline would be individually responsible for air/ground movement. Of course we should require clean pipes from and to Internet sources and destinations. Such a solution should inlude an auditing mechanism to ensure all ISPs/IXPs are following an internationally agreed upon standard.

  53. No, thanks. by sjames · · Score: 1

    Imagine if all of our internet security was as screwed up as the broken CA system for https is!

    The result is we would need end to end encryption running over the resource eating but not actually trustworthy default security (with the deliberate hole for governments and organized crime)

    .

  54. Re: Not just about networking. Software matters, t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, what I saw when the Ruby CoC was adopted was that it provoked people like you to be complete assholes on the matter. Unfortunately the irony seemed to be lost rather than it being a self-selecting set. Pity.

  55. Re: Not just about networking. Software matters, t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're too short sighted. When Rust prevents certain types of bugs it lets the programmers put more focus on avoiding the other types of bugs thst Rust can't prevent.

    When you use C your attention is split across avoiding many different types of bugs. Each gets only a small amount of focus. But when you use Rust you can put your full attention toward getting your logic right, and you don't even have to worry about memory or thread safety.

  56. Re: Not just about networking. Software matters, t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good gods no one fucking cares about Rust. You rusters are some rentseeking dudes.

  57. NO!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Obviously it's opposite day ;)

    - Betteridge

  58. Define :security" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It means different things to different people. Some people seem to think Confidentiality (encryption). Other people think of Authentication. Still others think security means something else entirely.

    The Internet is already 100% secure ... depending on your definition of secure.

  59. This is pretty stupid by mcrbids · · Score: 1

    What the Internet is, was, and is supposed to be was laid out a long time ago and in a very non-ambiguous way and it's worked famously for a long, long, LONG time.

    It's wonderfully working as it was supposed to do.

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  60. Networks can only provide the illusion of security by Casandro · · Score: 1

    A good example is the telephone network. It tries to have some security features, such as having identifiable source numbers. In reality that doesn't work and leads to false assumptions about the network.

    Essentially you cannot outsource security.

    The approach of the Internet is much saner. Just have a dumb network and have the endpoints do the actual security. This also allows for swift upgrades in security and for custom solutions addressing the specific security problems.

  61. Security for who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whenever you work with security you must ask yourself "For who do I implement this!". There are many instances where the anwer isn't clear (win 10 anyone?). When it comes to the ISP we end up in the national security quagmire. As long as leaders are benevolent angels there will be no issues. But what if a totalitarian president is elected in one of the key countries where mist data flows, (the US)? Suddenly its not so clear any more.

  62. guaranteed dumb pipe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    secure and reliable transport of data packets is what the internet should be doing.
    classifying what's INSIDE the packets is not.

    Thus it is this writers opinion that internet should just be a "dumb pipe".
    However, certain parts of the packets themselves need to be processed by the network hardware to figure out the destination etc.
    0f course this part needs to be filtered, monitored and secured but only for the reason that the
    packets get routed reliably!

    because, once the CONTENTS of packets get categorized, WHO then holds the power (and logic) to define bad from good?
    this "logic" can start at one point by some small part of the network and then drop packets and then so-called complaint
    packets (from other parts of the interconnected networks) get dropped because they are classified "bad" and thus the "outage" spreads to end with
    isolated local networks that cannot route anything in between anymore?

  63. APK's ads are dangerous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your ads are dangerous. Why you may ask? Because you're worse than a regular advertising company! You keep a dossier on people, tracking all their posts, trying to find out their Internet history and keep records, you've been known since the 90s on the Internet as someone who contacts people's ISPs if you have sufficient details, you contact their hosting providers, people's companies where they work to make a scene because they dared to disagree with you on the Internet.

    You ironically are the antithesis of safety online, you harass, provoke, stalk and it often starts with one of your advertisements. You have people tell you to go away and leave them alone, but you continue to pursue them, make legal threats etc. until you are satisfied. You are one of he few advertisers out there that I can actually point at and show that you are using information gathered against other people!

    In summary, the most dangerous advertisements people need to be weary of is yours, APK. Your adblocking solution does nothing to stop them either.

    1. Re:APK's ads are dangerous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You stalk apk constantly with your unidentifiable anonymous troll posts when you run out of modpoints for downmod bombing him so who are you trying to deceive here other than yourself?

    2. Re:APK's ads are dangerous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look everyone APK is whining and bitching like the big fat gay baby he is because someone is posting as AC, just like him. He isn't even claiming his work like the big fat gay bayb he is.

  64. Fundamentally unsecure by intention AND design by plague911 · · Score: 1

    The public internet is unsecure by intention and design. Remember the origins of the internet, DARPANET etc? Independent of being literal truth the old story that "The first crime on the internet, was to use the internet for anything other than military reasons." speaks volumes and is grounded in reality.

    A main motivator for the U.S. military opening up the internet to outsiders was to spy on them. Given that background there is fundamentally going to be no-way to securely access the internet. Trying to, is like trying to hold back the tide. You will not win.

    What you CAN do is temporarily secure small little fiefdoms. This is to me akin to reclaiming land from the sea, yes it can be done by nation-states but individuals are best advised to be aware of the line is and respect it.

  65. Yes, it should, but... by JohnFen · · Score: 1

    Yes, the internet should be secure by default. However, that's a different question from "should ISPs be doing it?"

    ISPs are not trustworthy, so any "security" imposed by them is meaningless. The internet should be secure by default through the protocol definitions, and enforced the same way that all internet protocols are enforced: if you don't conform, then you can't really talk with anybody.

  66. 'Secure' is irrelevant by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    When ISPs are literally snooping on everything you do because they can then all the encryption in the world means NOTHING. We need an Internet where the ISPs keep their little brown noses to themselves and out of everyones business; their role in a publicly-accessible Internet should be to provide connectivity to the public, not act as an 'advertising platform' in the interests of companies. Now, if ISPs want to provide broadband services for FREE to everyone then I can see where they'd have a right to snoop and insert ads and all the shit they do right now. But I'm PAYING for it? And they're DATAMINING me and selling that to other companies, so they can try to sell me shit I don't even WANT? Screw them.

  67. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

    Why don't you do some investigative journalism so that you can right an affirmative piece rather than leaving it up to your readers to prove your premise for you, you lazy fuck?

  68. Re: Not just about networking. Software matters, t by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Sure, and modern C++ prevents certain types of bugs, while allowing raw speed when needed. We also know that C++ isn't a passing fad.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  69. Retard APK showing the world he is Retard APK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is that retard APK showing the world how much of a fucking retard he is. He is spamming his little retarded hosts file engine again. Too bad any retard could work around it and it only stops people more retarded than APK. APK is just too retarded to even properly write which is why he always includes the retarded "See Subject". He will also, like a retard, continue to spam shit over and over again and will probably post some retarded out of context quotes too. APK is just an all around retard. Now for APK to continue showing the world how much of a retard he is.

  70. Weirdly worded, but agreed... by XSportSeeker · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure why people are trying to frame this in such a weird way, but agreed with the sentiment overall.
    It's not like ISPs should be against security, or that they shouldn't adopt secure practices... it's more like that they should not interfere with Internet traffic at all because it's not their right to do so.
    That's what the neutral argument stands for.

    The minute you make ISPs responsible for all sorts of things regarding the Internet is the moment they appropriate it, and then you are gonna get nick and dimed for everything, have your access interefered in all sorts of way to profit from your access, and you'll end up paying one way or another for having ISPs responsible for things they shouldn't.

  71. When you manage this? Then talk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine. Your software is well written, functional. The Host File Engine performs exactly as promised by mmell

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg

    (APK's) work, I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon

    I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works by bmo

    APK your posts on this & the hosts file posts, and more, have never been in error &/or bad advice by BlueStrat

    Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising & malvertising is quite valid by JazzLad

    I like your host file system by Karmashock

    * It's recommended/hosted by Malwarebytes' hpHosts!

    APK

    P.S.=> China imitated me http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/boffins_supercharge_the_hosts_file_to_save_users_plagued_by_dns_outages/ - See subject... apk

  72. Mere talk vs. WFP/ACL & my app protecting host by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mere talk vs. WFP/ACL & my app protecting hosts above those protection mechanisms in Windows you unidentifiable anonymous troll...

    APK

    P.S.=> Respected SECURITY & WEB PROS agree hosts = GOOD SECURITY, proof right here so EAT YOUR WORDS https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10953959&cid=54948109/ ... apk

  73. I identify myself - "your kind" won't... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I identify myself - "your kind" won't - you HAVE to hide while you troll me unidentifiably anonymously - who are you attempting to fool other than yourself?

    APK

    P.S.=> There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between myself & skulking WORMS like you & yours... apk