* Readers mull the social implications of providing network security
Last time, we delved into the reader responses to our ping and tracert discussions and described how one reader uses the protocols on their LAN and WAN. As you might expect, we also received quite a bit of “social commentary” feedback, and we’ll focus on that today.
One reader wrote in response to the decision of Steve’s alma mater to ban outbound pings: “I’m surprised, especially at a university. Even around here, with a Teutonic approach to control, the IS department restored ping and tracert when we moved from being under the control of our U.S. IS dept to the Munich IS department. Apparently, that college’s IS department is taking the easy way out.”
I think a word of further explanation is necessary. The ban on outbound pings was imposed to protect the world from the students. Probably not a bad idea, overall. In fact, a local coffee shop recently had to shut off its free Wi-Fi access after being identified as a source of a spamming attack.
Another reader wrote: “Why not shut down the network while you’re at it? Why stop with ping?
“I couldn’t agree more. The No. 1 tenant of CISOs [Chief Information Security Officers] was supposed to be to impose security so that it doesn’t interfere or be an excessive burden to the organization. I think losing this basic functionality was a poor option and takes an excellent tool away from users which I am sure delighted a few less helpful LAN admins. Security mitigation shouldn’t include the lost of functionality including the so-called ‘lockdown’ of desktops. If it includes the loss of functionality, then they didn’t do their job right. We, the IT professionals are better than this. We should live to a higher standard.
“Changing behavior in crime is the goal. Identifying the user should be the goal and appropriately sanctioning the user is the proper response.”
This is a really tough one, and we’re interpreting this as going far beyond shutting down outbound pings to include turning off inbound responses. The fundamental problem, just to reiterate, is that many of the underlying assumptions of IP and the Internet were that people would obey the rules. And, unfortunately, we can’t count on that any more.
Finally, a reader shared the following amusing comment: “I have heard of upper level management directing that ping be blocked for security by obscurity purposes, apparently in the belief that blocking ping will prevent discovery of one’s IP address. [These people in management] may not know about DNS.”
And they obviously don’t know about the “whois” function provided by organizations like Network Solutions. Want to know who owns nww.com? (No big surprise here.) Just enter it in the “whois” search and you can find out, along with the IP address, just in case your DNS is not functioning and you need to use the direct IP address to get the latest archives of this newsletter.
