The JSE still hasn’t said what in the Cisco IOS crashed the stock exchange. One unsubstantiated report was that it was a change to a firewall rule. However, I saw this released by Cisco:
“Multiple Multicast Vulnerabilities in Cisco IOS Software – Two crafted Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) packet vulnerabilities exist in Cisco IOS software that may lead to a denial of service (DoS) condition. Cisco has released free software updates that address these vulnerabilities. Workarounds that mitigate these vulnerabilities are available. ” It made me wonder if the crash was related to a vulnerability. We still don’t know!
In the bigger scheme I always wonder what major incidents have resulted from these vulnerabilities. If the infrastructure were aircraft and not routers we would know. Why aren’t these incidents and vulnerabilities subjected to similar rules to those that govern the FAA? Has a networking device even been a contributing cause to a human fatality?
