Re: A plea to ignore abuse reports from "watchdogcyberdefense.com"

["Glen A. Pearce" <nanog () ve4 ca>]

On 06/11/2024 10:01 a.m., Warren Kumari wrote:

>So, who here remembers "BlackICE Defender"?
>
>It was MS Windows software which would watch for and protect
>against "attacks", draw pretty charts and graphs, and also "report
>the attack to the attackers ISP".
>
>They did improve slightly over time, but things which it initially
>viewed as an attack were nefarious things like "you sent me an
>ICMP echo-request"...

If someone sent a ping to one of my Windows machines it wouldn't
even be seen by Windows because each machine is behind it's own
separate hardware firewall that would receive and respond to the
ping.  (I leave WAN ping enabled on the firewalls because I know
it's helpful to other internet users to test their connection.)

Of course I wouldn't buy junk software like that...

I can see where in  a corporate environment someone might buy
and install it because it checks a box on their "security checklist"
or maybe an individual that doesn't understand computers very
well buying anything marketed as protecting their computer even
though they really have no idea what it's doing.  (I do wonder
how many people have gotten computer viruses from malware
they downloaded that was masquerading as "security software".)

I do have to wonder how often some company installed it across their
whole corporate network and when one of their machines pinged
another one of their machines inside their network (using RFC 1918
address space) BlackIce Defender on the machine receiving the ping
would send an abuse report to abuse () iana org. ^_^

--
Glen A. Pearce
gap () ve4 ca
Network Manager, Webmaster, Bookkeeper, Fashion Model and Shipping Clerk.
Very Eager 4 Tees
http://www.ve4.ca
ARIN Handle VET-17