From: Zooko Journeyman <zooko@xs4all.nl>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 22:29:53 +0800
To: neumann@csl.sri.com
Subject: i miss carol anne cyphergrrl
Message-ID: <199707171415.QAA06056@xs2.xs4all.nl>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



or whatever her name was.


A dangerous radical named Steve allegedly typed:

> Seems to me that having only a few, heavily trafficed, NAPs is a
> topological weakness in the Net which needs to be delt with soon.



The problem is economic.  During info-peace-time non-
robust networks are cheaper.  Redundancy and other robustness 
techniques are an expense that doesn't pay back.

During info-peace-time.


Under duress-- be it accidents, load, or info-war-- such 
designs are inadequate.


What's the solution?  I dunno.


Here're some options:


A.  Make design which is robust under attack but still cheap 
for everyday use.  Not sure if it is feasible.


B.  Convince people to spend more on robustness of systems.  
But this is infeasible on a huge scale and in anarchic and 
uncoordinated social system e.g. Internet.


C.  Hire info-warriors to attack systems, hopefully doing as 
little permanent damage as possible but achieving enough 
penetration to convince even the most thick-headed manager that
his system is weak.


Hence I propose a fund, The Randall Schwartz Memorial Cracking
Reward Fund, which will regularly award dcash payments to the 
cracker who most illustriously exposed the weaknesses of 
system.  Scaring the pants off of the managers and leaders is 
a plus.  Enlightening the public about the dangers of a 
specific system or technique is a plus.  Scaring the public 
into thinking that all systems/networks/computers/software are
dangerous is arguably a plus or a minus.  :-)


Doing permanent damage or unnecessary disruption of service is
a big minus.  Usually a calling card saying "Soo Do Nym was 
here" is sufficient.


The pay-off could be instituted by way of an "Assassination 
Systemics" scheme (which is merely an application of Idea 
Futures, of course), in which the bettor who most accurately 
predicted the time and other details of the target system's 
penetration receives the bulk of the winnings.


I hereby bet 10 cyberbucks that no clever hacker will be able 
to redirect "www.internic.net" to point to AlterNIC.



Zooko Journeyman

"We are an internation of code and not of laws."