ACME security experts are continuously checking and monitoring our infrastructure. Upon receiving concern from our partners, we are planning to conduct security reviews of our architecture and we shall implement enhancements according to the recommendations provided.
HKIX announcements for hacking activities
Dear HKIX Participants,
You may have heard that “NSA Whistle-blower” Mr. Edward Snowden mentioned “Chinese University” and later “Internet Routers” when he was interviewed by SCMP on hacking done by NSA of USA (see http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259508/edward-snowden-us-government-has-been-hacking-hong-kong-and-china). This has made a lot of people think he is referring to HKIX, and HKIX has been hacked and data passing through HKIX has been stolen by NSA.
We certainly are very concerned about this. Right after we were aware of this, we have done checking and monitoring. So far, we have not located any anomalies. Bear in mind that HKIX is basically just a switched layer 2 network and we do not really have routers (but HKIX participants have). Therefore, we believe HKIX has NOT been hacked. We shall do checking and monitoring continuously. Of course, we cannot have much visibility on things outside of our part. So, we call on you all to do your own checking and monitoring on your part.
Nevertheless, in order to provide enhanced security to HKIX infrastructure, we have already stepped up our security measures, both physically and logically, and we shall continue to do so. In addition, we are planning to conduct security reviews of HKIX overall by external parties. Upon receiving the reports, we shall implement enhancements according to the recommendations provided. Of course, that means it is even harder to get access to HKIX infrastructure which causes more inconvenience to ourselves. And, the cost of running HKIX will inevitably be higher. However, we think we cannot compromise security.
We also value your inputs. So, if you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to let us know.
BTW, it is worth to mention here that we are conducting an upgrade exercise for HKIX core layer-2 infrastructure so as to prepare for the future. The new HKIX architecture will be a dual-core architecture taking advantage of our new data centre in campus with a 2-tier design which can be scalable to support much more than 4Tbps of total traffic. Besides, we shall support 100GE connections. The production is targeted for end of 2013. We shall send you updates on this later.
Thank you very much for your attention.
With best regards,
HKIX