At 10:32 AM -0400 4/20/98, Brock, Todd A wrote about frame relay: >I too would be REAL interested in any responses to this inquiry. Because I >am VERY doubtful that there will be any but purely anecdotal response >supporting the assumption of insecurity or known hacks or eavesdropping etc. >on a Frame link. IMHO if you think Frame is insecure, then you might as >well assume that ALL public telecommunication is. (This includes "private" >leased lines). I think this hits the nail squarely on the head. If the data owner believes that attackers have the means and motive to intercept their traffic as it traverses public telecom networks, then additional security is warranted. If the data owner doesn't believe the attackers' benefits will outweigh their costs, then encryption is unnecessary. In certain industries you do have national level eavesdropping organizations (NSA or NSA like) spending lots of money listening to commercial traffic for a variety of reasons (trade secrets in critical technologies, info to support trade negotiations, strategic assessments, etc). But if the data owner doesn't think it's a risk, then the data owner isn't going to spend the money. Often the information is accessible through several easier channels anyway. However, it's important to keep in mind that lots of systems still rely heavily on reusable "secret" passwords for authentication. This may give attackers a really juicy target and might make costly attacks seem worthwhile. Rick. smithat_private
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 12:56:12 PDT