In defense of NASA: was Re: Wirin' up blinkenlights

From: Clint Wolff <vaxman_at_uswest.net>
Date: Sat Jun 10 10:34:15 2000

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:

> > > Is
> > > the lack of security on the Internet possibly a well designed feature
> > > disguised as a flaw?
> >
> > No, it is because much of it is Unix oriented. And Unix
> > security is just not that good.
>
> This isn't quite right, but does explain why Internet security
> has not improved.
>
> First and foremost, like most other ARPA projects (such as
> Multics), the ARPAnet was meant to be a prototype for what
> a network could be. One of the base-level assumptions was
> that it would provide information sharing between a small
> number of trusted and trusting sites.
>

Yes, the ARPAnet (funded by DARPA - DEFENSE Advanced
Research blah blah) was the prototype for a distributed
communications system built to survive a nuclear attack.
MILnet was built based on this prototype, and is in use
today. It is mostly secure because there are only a few,
tightly controlled, gateways to the Internet.

NSFnet was the publically funded arm developed to facilitate
communication between universities and a few corporations.
For the most part individuals that had access to the Internet
were college upperclassmen, who had a real reason to have
access. My first experience was in the mid-80's, when
more lowerclassmen were being granted access. This
brought about the proliferation of ftp sites with pictures
of nekked women, and the threat from NSF to disconnect
any site (they could do that, and make it stick) engaged
in such a frivolous waste of bandwidth. There still wasn't
a great need for security because the only people having
access were college educated individuals without a great
design to destroy. Hacking into remote computers was done
for the challenge and to discover new stuff.

Then AOL came along :) With the selling of backbone
connections by AT&T and others, and the proliferation of
internet connections that NSF didn't control, NSFnet was
soon overwhelmed and absorbed by the Internet. We now
have an anarchy of competing ISPs tied into the Internet,
and low cost access available to any monkey with a keyboard.
There is now a real need to protect the backbone against
malicious hackers, but no real way to do it.

> However, from my own personal experience, I have never
> succeeded in creating a prototype of a system to show to
> management that management didn't say "a few more tweaks
> and we're done". Although prototypes, both Multics and
> ARPAnet were rushed into production because no one wanted
> to take the time to stop and do it over again, better the
> second time.
>
> regards,
> -doug quebbeman
>
>
Received on Sat Jun 10 2000 - 10:34:15 BST