RE: Denial of service

[David C Niemi <niemi () tux org>]

On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, Ted Doty wrote:
> I personally don't think that you can protect yourself from Denial Of
> Service attacks in an Internet environment, since there are so many
> autonomous domains of control.
...
> If your network positively has to be up for mission critical applications,
> don't connect it to the Internet.

Nowadays a lot of companies have mission-critical applications which
*depend on* the Internet.  And for good business reasons, like making or
saving a lot of money.  Does this mean they expect to have 100% uptime for
these applications?  Does this mean you should gratuitously rely on the
Internet for critical communications?  Of course not.  But they do want
their availability to be high, and disconnecting from the Internet makes no
economic sense. 

It is very important to consider, and where it is not too costly, address,
DoS attacks.  Of course you can't eliminate them 100%, but you can make
your systems far more robust than if you didn't try.  In the process you
protect yourself from quite a few modes of failure which result from random
bugs and accidents, not just concerted malicious attacks. 

---  David C Niemi ---niemi at tux.org---  Reston, Virginia, USA  ---
           Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo.