IP: IMPORTANT ISSUE Re: Recent Internet Attacks and Critical Infrastructure Protectio n

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

[ I know and hope this starts a debate . I will summarize comments and 
package them for distribution. This is a VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE djf]



>From: "Baker, Stewart" <SBaker@steptoe.com>
>To: "'farber@cis.upenn.edu'" <farber@cis.upenn.edu>,
>
>
>Dave,
>
>I like Mike and Jim, but this cut-and-paste reissue of their old paper seems
>to be intended to dodge the hard question that CDT and its friends should be
>answering after the recent distributed denial of service attacks on CNN and
>other sites.
>
>The fact is that most of the recent DDOS attacks could have been prevented
>or made easier to handle if there were better authentication of machines on
>the Net.  Forged addresses are at the center of much of the mischief.
>
>So why don't we have better authentication on the Net?  Well, one reason is
>that CDT and similar groups have made it their business to attack companies
>that introduce authentication to the Net.  They've encouraged the FTC and
>Congress and European privacy bureaucrats to investigate and intimidate any
>company that introduces authentication technologies they consider
>politically incorrect.  Remember their effort to boycott Intel and Microsoft
>for the processor serial number and the GUID?  CDT and its allies obviously
>believe that anonymity on the Net needs to be protected.  Maybe so, but not
>at any price, and these DDOS attacks are only a small part of the price
>we're going to pay if we continue to let CDT politicize the deployment of
>authentication technology.
>
>
>Stewart Baker
>Steptoe & Johnson LLP
>phone -- 202.429.6413
>email fax -- 202.261.9825
>main fax -- 202.429.3902
>sbaker@steptoe.com