I don't think the analogy to a ping attack is a particularly fair one. Yes, from the perspective of an innocent third user, they look the same, perhaps, but they aren't. If the attack were made through some sort of security gate that defaults to "closed" state which the sysadmin had accidentally opened and left open, I think that would be a more fair analogy. Quibbling over details, perhaps, but there is an important difference.
On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:11:58 -0400, David Boyes <dbo...@sinenomine.net> w rote: >On 9/18/09 9:32 AM, "Bill Holder" <hold...@us.ibm.com> wrote: > >> That is indeed one important question, but there was another one, the >> question of whether this was a denial of service attack exposure, whic h i >> t >> is not. > >I think that's a point of view question. > >If I am another user on the same VM system, happy within my cozy little >class G box, and the hypervisor admin does something outside of my contr ol >to some OTHER user that causes CP to choke, then from the original user' s >perspective it IS a DOS attack because it's something that is out of my >control, starves ME, and causes ME to choke without reason. > >An analagous parallel case in the distributed system world would be a pi ng >flood attack on a network segment. The innocent get hurt along with the >intended target by being starved of access to the network, and thus lose the >ability to function according to design. > >From the hypervisor admin's POV, then yeah, it's just doing what it's to ld >to do. It's correct operation, working as documented. > >I think Bill Schuh and Marcy and myself are arguing for the former >viewpoint. I think you and Adam are arguing from the latter view. > >> I'm not disagreeing that it would be nice if there were some sor >> t >> of "are you sure" safety net before the system proceeded to try to do >> something suicidal, but that's a design and requirements question, not a >> defect question. > >I think we're all in violent agreement on that point. Now, the question is >what is the best way to put a safety on that gun? >======================== ========================= =======================
