[AusNOG] "NBN Co to reserve data port for government"

[Paul Brooks]

On 17/07/2013 1:19 PM, Heinz N wrote:
>
> On Tue, 16 Jul 2013, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:
>
>> I wonder how they're going to use it?
>> Let's say they wanted to use it for a "smart meter" - I'm fascinated how the
>> process of cabling from whereever the NBN NTU is to the electricity meter.
>
> Apparently these privacy stealing communist "dumbmeters" create their own mesh
> network, with certain undisclosed units being a network node. At least this is how
> it appears in Victoria. Doing an internet cross/inter-connect with that mesh will be
> marvelous for the hackers trying to take down an electricity grid. Look at
> http://www.stopsmartmeters.com.au for more info.
>
> As for multiple ports, imaging trying to talk some end user into plugging and
> unplugging RJ45 plugs into the correct sockets.

 I did a session at AusCERT2011 conference on the difficulties of securing the inhome
networks (preso not online), and much the same is at
http://networkinsight.org/verve/_resources/Careful_What_You_Wish_For_CPRF2010Paul_Brooks_lr.pdf 
- "Be careful what you wish for".
For some reason I didn't do this one as an AusNOG talk, that year.

TL;DR summary: residential routers won't deal well with multiple upstream feeds, with
possibly overlapping IP address ranges. Users _will_ bridge them together, and without
running any sort of routing protocol between the CPE router and each of the upstream
provider routers (including this government port) - which outbound port does the
router direct every upstream packet to? Even if it comes with two different WAN ports,
which they don't.
Think of the fun that two independently configured routers can get up to when
connected to the same in-home LAN.

P.