[ncc-services-wg] That's So Meta (was Re: New on RIPE Labs: RIPE NCC and the Cloud - Let’s Start Again)

FYI

APNIC left a dump from its Whois SQL database in a public Google Cloud
bucket
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/22/apnic_whois_data_exposed/
The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the internet
registry for the region, has admitted it left at least a portion of
its Whois SQL database, which contains sensitive information, facing
the public internet for three months.

Jome
----
jorma at jmellin.net


Quoting Shane Kerr <shane at time-travellers.org>:

> Nick,
>
> On 22/06/2021 23.50, Nick Hilliard wrote:
>> Patrik Fältström wrote on 22/06/2021 21:23:
>>
>> With regard to the ripe database and the rpki repo, it doesn't look like
>> there are any specific legal issues that haven't been considered.   
>> All of this information is publicly accessible anyway.  There may  
>> well be a different set of considerations for other types of data.
>
> I don't think that is is okay to say "this information is publicly  
> accessible anyway". On a RIPE Database or RPKI server there is  
> meta-data about *who* is accessing the database, including  
> timestamps, source addresses, and possibly other data. There is also  
> meta-data about *what queries* are made to the database. There also  
> things to be learned about replication delays between servers, and  
> surely a lot more that might be of interest to creative folks.
>
> I don't know about now, but at one point there were firewalls and/or  
> intrusion-detection systems that would query the RIPE Database to  
> give the admin information about the source of suspicious traffic.  
> An attacker trying to penetrate a network might be able to identify  
> which security products were in use if given unrestricted access to  
> WHOIS query logs. I'm not saying this is a likely scenario, I'm  
> saying we should be cautious about declaring access to data safe.  
> Humans (and increasingly AI) are ingenious about ways to use systems  
> in unintended ways.
>
> As a thought experiment to try to demonstrate the idea, how would  
> you feel about a proposal to provide public access to complete  
> system logs of all RIPE Database servers? If that makes you nervous  
> in any way - and I think that it should! - then this is exactly why  
> we should consider the operators hosting RIPE Database (and RPKI)  
> resources important.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Shane