[ISN] TCP, BGP, DoS, and BS

[InfoSec News]

Forwarded from: "Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah" <rslade at sprint.ca>

The sky is falling!  We're all going to die!

No, it's not.  No, we're not

The latest "death of the net" rumour has to do with a recent paper
that discusses the fact that something called "session hijacking" can
be used to force an end to a specific connection (connected sessions
over the Internet use an arrangement called TCP).  If the session is
ended or disconnected, you will be effectively denied the service you
were attempting to obtain.  Connected sessions are used for everything
from transferring files to connecting to the Internet in special ways
to virtual private networks.  Sometimes they are used to transfer
information between the machines that decide where Internet traffic
goes (called routers).  If the routers can't keep up to date, the
Internet will not be as effective as it should be.

So you will have heard that there is a new threat to the Internet,
that it is a denial of service attack, that it can disconnect you from
the net, that it can kill your sessions, that it affects the routers
(and a router protocol called BGP), and that sessions can be hijacked.

None of this is new.  What is new is a paper that was originally
presented in England, caught the attention of the media there, and has
spread, kinda like a hoax virus warning, from media outlets to
bandwagon jumpers in the security field and back to the media, around
the world.

Denial of service attacks are not new.  Session hijacking is not new.  
Using TCP resets and session hijacking in combination has not been
used in specific attacks before, but all the parts of this attack are
well known to people who deal with such things.  There are even ways
to protect against this attack, and some institutions use them.

So, rather than talking about the death of the net, and "The Man Who
Saved the Internet":

Net not dead, but was coughing up blood last night.  Phlegm at 11.


======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade at vcn.bc.ca      slade at victoria.tc.ca      rslade at sun.soci.niu.edu
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be
smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's
important.
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade