Schneier on Kumar, Paxson paper

Thomas Ptacek | May 27th, 2005 | Filed Under: Uncategorized

Schneier comments on Kumar and Paxson’s excellent paper. ” They also believe that the attack was, at least in part, a deliberate cyber-attack on the U.S. military; an army base was deliberately targeted in the worm’s hotlist.” All due respect, Schneier, but I don’t think that conclusion is supported by the paper (though with a Nicholas Weaver co-credit, you can’t really tell for sure).

Really, the only thing the authors can point out is that a .mil /16 was specifically targeted; there are other reasons to target military bases than wanting to “cyber-attack” the U.S. military —- like, for instance, the fact that military installations are well-documented ISS customers and thus more likely to have infectable hosts.