[CLUG] Detective story for nerds

[adam beecher]

Flawed Routers Flood University of Wisconsin Internet Time Server
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~plonka/netgear-sntp/

In May 2003, the University of Wisconsin - Madison found that it was the
recipient of a continuous large scale flood of inbound Internet traffic
destined for one of the campus' public Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers.
The flood traffic rate was hundreds-of-thousands of packets-per-second, and
hundreds of megabits-per-second.

Subsequently, we have determined the sources of this flooding to be
literally hundreds of thousands of real Internet hosts throughout the world.
However, rather than having originated as a malicious distributed
denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, the root cause is actually a serious flaw
in the design of hundreds of thousands of one vendor's low-cost Internet
products targeted for residential use. The unexpected behavior of these
products presents a significant operational problem for UW-Madison for years
to come.

This document includes the initial public disclosure of details of these
products' serious design flaw. Furthermore, it discusses our ongoing,
multifaceted approach toward the solution which involves the University, the
products' manufacturer, the relevant Internet standards (RFCs), and the
public Internet service and user communities.


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| Politicians are people who lie to the press and |
| then believe what they read.       (Will Durst) |
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