Re: Home DSL Connections Hijacked for Porn

From: Beoweolf (Beoweolf_at_pacbell.net)
Date: 07/13/03 

Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 03:29:32 GMT

All your points and complaints are the same old tired homilies that Pac
bell, back in the good ole' days, used to justify charging extra for people
who used 600 baud modems on their home phone lines. Provide the service, the
connection, at a reasonable price then let the customer decide what he wants
to do with his connection. If the customer causes some problem, then as
noted, address the problem with the customer. Taking the lazy way out, by
banning services, is an abridgment of the service. When you, specifically
paid for a static IP, you are informing the carrier of your intent.

I have seen the results of kiddy hackers and script kiddies (who are not all
kids) testing networks, probing and generally leaving crap in their tracks.
It's inconvenient at most and tiresome...but, hey, it keeps them off the
streets. Keeps the staff on their toes. Again, if a professionally managed
installation is troubled by this kind of attack, you need new staff.

The point is still the same, how do you make the jump from a nuisance, the
cost of doing business on a "Public" media, to advocating a model that was
phased out with de-regulation many years ago. Look at it another way;
despite requiring drivers licenses, despite an enormous investment in
testing and enforcement...we still have bad drivers, others that don't
follow the rules of the road and some that thumb their noses at the
conventional precautions. This is no different, business has no innate right
to hijack the Web any more than truck drivers, taxi's and other
transportation services do on the highways. By the way, we peons are
supporting the "Net" with our taxes, they should have a chance to make use
of the benefits, its not just the ISP's. If business is really concerned
about net conditions, go back to the old model of install T1, T3, Frame
relay instead of seeking a free ride (lower cost) over the internet, then
complaining when there's a bump or two.

I doubt if you will actually see the point or admit there is a point. My
concern was to address the reality that individuals as well as
companies/corps make mistakes, take short cuts. Attempting to place
additional restrictions on the scattered many, to make life easier for the
connected few is not the way to handle the problem.

"elihpomaps ton" <no_spam_for_me@dev.nul> wrote in message
news:Xns93B6B1BEFDB9Bemailmedevnul@63.223.5.254...
> "Beoweolf" <Beoweolf@pacbell.net> wrote in
> news:rSZPa.314$Z76.70@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com:
>
> > How do you make the leap from hijacked DSL / servers being hijacked
> > and used by Hackers, directly to proposing a Draconian solution of
> > stripping users of the right to run a home server?
>
> You have no "right" to run anything except what your ISP allows in their
> TOS (whatever that may be). They provide you with an email address and
> usually with a web site location on their server. What reason do you have
> to run your own mail or web server? Most cable companies and an ever
> increasing number of ISP's are blocking home servers.
>
> >
> > All users are not the cause of the problem, thus all users should not
> > be punished for the infraction. You proposal is elitist in concept and
> > possibly places an unnecessary financial burden on legitimate,
> > responsible users of DSL. Given that many supposedly professionally
> > managed servers infected by worms, Trojan horses, virus attacks ...
> > daily and repeatedly...how is it that you want to focus on amateurs?
>
> Bull ***! Spam and kiddy hack attacks are burdens which lack of control
> place on all the rest of us. The percent of "professionally managed"
> servers with problems is a small fraction of poorly secured and unpatched
> PC's sitting in bedrooms and living rooms.
>
> "Amateurs" ARE most of the problem.
>
> > Let's get our on house in order first, then worry about the 10%'ers.
> >
> > The chicken little doomsday predictions and/or hype is tiresome and
> > does no one any good. DSL is a cheap alternative to T1, T3 lines and
> > satify the bandwidth requirements of home as well as small office
> > user. Education or fostering responsible prevention of problems, by
> > applying relay prevention techniqes, installing firewalls (not ZA and
> > BI) and NAT, would be more appropriate.
> >
>
> No one is arguing that either DSL or cable is bad. Most of the people who
> post to this newsgroup have dsl or cable connections and are very happy
> using the mail and web tools provided by their ISP. By blocking server
> ports their ISP's afford them a greater margin of protection against
> miscongfigure.
>
> I am tired of getting spam and kiddy port probes from addresses which
> contain the phrase "adsl".
>
> The internet is not a toy. Here are two alternatives which more safely
> allow experimentation and play:
>
> 1. Find a webhosting provider who has a valid abuse address and
> lets them configure their own servers with limited supervision.
> or
> 2. Arrange with their ISP to set them up with a static address and
> a domain name. They then must maintain a valid abuse address and agree to
> take the consequences of any security issues.
> or
> 3. Take a position as a sysadmin or systems analyst with a provider
> or a corporation with a large IS Department. Then see if they still want
> adsl and cable boxes to have unrestricted ports after 90 days in their new
> position ...
>