Re: ISPs as content-police or method-police

[Ben Browning <benb () oz net>]

At 11:54 11/20/2000 -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> I suspect that if a large percentage of Tier 1/2 carriers actually filtered
> ports 137 through 139, we'd not be seeing anywhere near the amount of QAZ and
> similar activity.  And as has been pointed out, you can ALWAYS punch a hole
> in the filter for customers who like to live risky, or they can find other
> ways to tunnel their packets.

Well, we'd actually see a good deal of QAZ still, if Tier One was filtering 
it... QAZ primarily hunts in the same class C it lives in.

Aside from that, I certainly agree that it is not our job to dictate what 
our customers can or cannot do on the big-eye-nternet. What I also think is 
that it *is* our responsibility to maintain the sanctity of our networks. I 
don't see any customers up-in-arms because of the lack of directed 
broadcast services on most of our networks, and I think this situation is 
roughly analogous.

The point is this: 137-139 are used for NetBIOS and Samba, neither of which 
are secure (or even supported by their vendors, AFAIK) for use out on the 
Internet. I think we can all agree that anyone using them in that 
situation, shouldn't be.


---
Ben Browning <benb () oz net>
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