From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 10:37:13 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RE: engineering infowar disasters (was Re: How the FBI/NSA forces can further twist SAFE)
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19970928131309.008af664@pop.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Phill warned Adam:

>I suggest unless people want to hand the FBI an excuse
>to harass everyone that they don't enter into this discussion.

The WSJ reported recently on the comparatively lax security
of the principal US nodes of the Internet -- MAEs and such. 
The reporter located the facilities and spoke to several of the 
sys admins, most of whom were surprised at being IDed, and 
were reluctant to discuss security. Some did, though, and
shook their nogs at the ease with which the whole shebang 
could be trashed, claiming that for now it was only obscurity
that saved the net -- or at least its facilities -- and asked
the reporter not to tell the full story.

A similar report was written in a mag a few months back, with
a focus on the New Jersey facility (with photo), MAE, I think.

There was a discussion here in 1994 or so on the location of 
the landing points of transatlantic cables, many of which come
into New York City at obscure points along the coast, into
huts and shacks, actually, easily located by following the
cables shown on coastal maritime maps which neatly diagram 
every one of them to warn off shipping and dredging.

At that time some of the cpunks associated with the telco
and financial industries here (NYC) hinted at even worse 
security, especially the facilities kind, at the humongous 
hi-rise switching banks and highly accessible local 
distribution cablings into dank "secure" cells.

I pray that none of these remarks are seen as darkly conspiratorial, 
but merely chit-chat, like Phill's bark.

-- 
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* violated EAR today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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