[105278] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Cable Colors
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Mon Jun 16 22:29:32 2008
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:28:24 -0400
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.62.0806162024000.21917@linuxbox.org>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 20:32:15 -0500 (CDT)
Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org> wrote:
> In one organization red was for the sensitive private network, and in
> another red meant "danger Will Robinson", public unsafe network. In
> yet another red was for grounded power.
>
Right. The universal convention in NSA-type crypto gear is
red==cleartext, black==ciphertext. Designs have to provide proper
"red/black separation". But when Bill Cheswick and I put in the Bell
Labs firewall in the early 1990s, we used red cables for the dangerous
outside net.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
