I came in to work today and discovered that our corporate DNS, hosted by Network Solutions, is down today, meaning people can’t get to our site, nor can we access our mail servers. This appears to be the result of an attack on Verisign/Network Solutions that started somewhere around March 27th and seems to have escalated, according to articles at ComputerWorld. Calling Network Solutions’s support line directly yields a recorded message that they have technicians working on the problem and that it’s their top priority. Even www.networksolutions.com doesn’t respond.
This severe outage is a good thing.
Well, that is if you consider getting a rude wake-up call a good thing.
As end users, we tend to care more if our software and networks give the appearance of working, rather than being reliable and resilient.
Take spam, for instance. There’s no need that you should have to be plagued with it, but because no one wants to adopt to solutions that correct the problem because it will break existing backwards compatability with software, we just deal with it.
Take Windows, for instance. There’s no need that an operating system should crash or degrade in performance over time, but because no one wants to adopt to solutions that correct the problem because it will break existing backwards compatability with software, we just deal with it. I can still use Internet Explorer, right…?
Well now, take DNS for instance. There’s no need that it has to be susceptible to these kinds of attacks, but because no one wants to… wait, I can’t get my email? What happened? You mean we can’t go on ignoring problematic protocols and the crypto guys were right all this time?
Yes.
One of two things will happen. Either the bad guys will stop, or get caught, and we’ll go back to the way things were, being just as vunerable for the next time around.
Or, this will be the eye-opening event that declares that in order to combat against cyber terrorism and evil doers, we must take the next step forward and start using next generation protocols with our software that address the lessons learned of our past.
Yes, it’s painful now. I understand that. I don’t like it either. But I’d rather have it happen now, when we can do something about it, than later when it is really inconvenient.
UPDATE (10:10am): Network Solutions’s web page is now responding again.