[Discuss] Cisco's IOx architecture

[Peter (peabo) Olson]

On February 1, 2014 at 7:46 AM Daniel Feenberg <feenberg at nber.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 1 Feb 2014, Peter (peabo) Olson wrote:
>
> > On February 1, 2014 at 2:42 AM Tom Metro <tmetro+blu at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Is running applications on your router really such a good idea?
> >>
> >> http://gigaom.com/2014/01/31/in-a-distributed-world-cache-is-king-why-routers-are-becoming-the-new-server/
> >> [...]
> >>   Cisco's IOx architecture will be a Linux-based operating system that
> >>   will be embedded in forthcoming industrial routers.
> >>
> >>   And unlike its previous box software, Cisco says it plans to open the
> >>   IOx architecture up for others to run their own applications on
> >
> > A router should be a router.  Allowing applications to run on it invites
> > serious
> > security risks.
>
> Perhaps they are thinking of load balancing/security/monitoring as the
> type of application that a user might run on the router itself. I don't
> imagine they expect users to run SQL or Word.
>
> Daniel Feenberg
> NBER

I wouldn't think so either, but an application of any kind doesn't get the same
level of scrutiny as the core router code, and hence invites attacks.  The
statement "run their own applications on" suggests to me that these would not be
widely field-tested (in contrast to features developed by Cisco itself as
selectable options).

peabo