Good stuff.
The TCP/IP protocols were conceived during a time that was quite different from the hostile environment they operate in now. Yet a direct result of their effectiveness and widespread early adoption is that much of today’s global economy remains dependent upon them.
While many textbooks and articles have created the myth that the Internet Protocols (IP) were designed for warfare environments, the top level goal for the DARPA Internet Program was the sharing of large service machines on the ARPANET [Clark, 1988]. As a result, many protocol specifications focus only on the operational aspects of the protocols they specify and overlook their security implications.
Though Internet technology has evolved, the building blocks are basically the same core protocols adopted by the ARPANET more than two decades ago. During the last twenty years many vulnerabilities have been identified in the TCP/IP stacks of a number of systems. Some were flaws in protocol implementations which affect only a reduced number of systems. Others were flaws in the protocols themselves affecting virtually every existing implementation [Bellovin, 1989]. Even in the last couple of years researchers were still working on security problems in the core protocols [Gont, 2008] [Watson, 2004] [NISCC, 2004] [NISCC, 2005].
Alex Eckelberry