for another opinion on Steve Gibson and his woes, check out the NANOG thread
that has been running for a few days now titled "GRC rides again"
http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/
apparently there are other takes on this.
Chuck
P.S. relevance to groupstudy? you bet!
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
Natasha
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 10:16 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Forwarded from the GRC.COM newsletter [7:10954]
Hello Natasha,
_________________________________________________________________
The May 2001 Denial of Service Attacks Against GRC.COM
_________________________________________________________________
During the first few weeks of May, GRC.COM was the target of
several distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks launched
by a 13-year-old hacker using a tool he did not write. Using
this tool, "Wicked" commanded multiple sustained attacks from
474 security-compromised Windows-based PC's.
The whole tale turned into a pretty good read, and is
something I imagine you may enjoy. You can read the entire
page online on our web site, or you can download the PDF
file for offline reading or printing.
The page on our site:
The PDF file:
Windows XP:
The experience with Windows-based denial of service attacks
focused my attention on Microsoft's planned release of Windows XP
with its planned inclusion of "Full Raw Socket" support. Full raw
sockets are a powerful and dangerous Internet API that exists in
all Unix-based operating systems. But under Unix they are
deliberately protected by the rigorous requirement for "root"
privilege. (Similar to Microsoft's "Administrative" privilege.)
However Microsoft has done away with this distinction in the Home
Edition of Windows XP which threatens to populate the world with
a needlessly dangerous capability.
Microsoft and I have been arguing about this quite a lot
recently. Last Thursday, this culminated in an eight-way
telephone conference:
My page explaining the XP threat:
About our phone conference:
The new GRC News server:
The denial of service attacks adversely affected our Windows-
based newsgroup server forcing us to give up on it and switch to
a Unix-based solution. That machine has a different name and IP
address. If you were using the news server at "grc.com" and IP
address of [207.71.92.193] please change your news reader to
connect to "news.grc.com" at the IP address of [207.71.92.194].
Our new "grc.spoofarino" newsgroup is the place to discuss Denial
of Service attacks, Windows XP, and related matters! See you there!
Our new Media page:
Since I last wrote, we finally got the video clips from my various
appearances on ZDTV and TechTV online. Those who are interested
may find a page describing their format and an index to them here:
A new ShieldsUP! coming soon:
In preparation for the "Spoofarino" freeware (mentioned at the
bottom of the long DoS report page) we will be bringing the GRC
NanoProbe technology over to the main GRC server for the first
time. Our existing ShieldsUP! security evaluation system will
receive its first significant upgrade since its introduction.
As soon as it's ready for your testing I'll let you know!
_________________________________________________________________
Thank you for your time. I hope this has been useful to you.
Steve Gibson. GRC Website
--
Natasha Flazynski
CCNA, MCSE
http://www.ciscobot.com
My Cisco information site.
http://www.botbuilders.com
Artificial Intelligence and Linux development
------------------------------------------------
Message Posted at:
http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=10957&t=10954
--------------------------------------------------
FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html
Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
