Grand Finals Day 3: Security is under control

By Ben van Kerkwyk
ProCurve Networking by HP

SEATTLE – Hacking into an event broadcast on the Internet to more than 30 million people would have very high visibility – especially the Grand Finals of the World Cyber Games here this week. It’s also highly unlikely to happen.  In terms of affecting the games while they’re going on, it would be very difficult because all the traffic is local.

There are no outward-facing PCs in the network. The servers are local. PC communication is basically 1-to-1. And none of that stuff goes out on the Internet. That will make it very difficult for someone to get in.

The only way would be to bring in a Trojan that would connect out to let people connect in. But at that point you’re really dealing with PC security, not the network. Though we can’t control what’s happening on the PCs or the Internet sides, we certainly can control the traffic and things like traffic-storms internally. Yes, someone could attack the Internet links. But there’s actually another group that’s doing security for the router and DS3 line.

The WCG folks say there have been some viruses running around the PCs. But we configured connection rights filtering virus throttling on all switches, which will prevent bandwidth drains. As I said yesterday, the Virtual LAN configuration helps to organize your network into logical and controllable parts.

The biggest problem today: The WCG administrator discovered they hadn’t given us the right set of requirements until about five minutes before the main stage games were supposed to start. Once we identified what they wanted us to do, it only took about 30 seconds. But that’s the challenge with this whole thing – communication among all the different parties involved so we can understand what they want. Then we can make it happen.

Coordinating is especially important at the staging point. When everyone gets to where they can test certain activities, it becomes just a constant flow as everything gets turned on. Now we sit back and enjoy the show – and hopefully play some games!

Tonight we plan to watch the opening ceremonies, and make sure the network works as well as we think it will. Judging by the arena-quality sound and light setup – as well as the rehearsals – it will be a loud and rowdy show. Cheers!

PS: There was one other interesting technical challenge today for the Internet provider. The Cisco router running the Internet was tanking a bit. The CPU is pegged at 99, so we had to get people on the line to figure it out. It’s just a horsepower issue.

Check our World Cyber Games coverage on www.procurve.com/WCG. I’ll be posting regular updates, as well as writing about the Grand Finals in the next issue of Network Pro News. If you’re in Seattle, stop by and see us.