Unregistered SLAC Web Servers Blocked at Firewall on 12 August 1997

Revised 7 August 1997

Announcement:

On Tuesday, August 12, 1997, external access to unregistered Web servers at SLAC will be blocked at the firewall. The information on those servers will still be accessible to Web users internally, but not to off-site users. Before implementing this block, we have tried to ensure that all Web material needed by off-site users is now on central or registered servers. If you encounter an access problem after this date, please notify either the page owner or the Web Server Registrar.

Will you be affected?

Access to the SLAC central servers (e.g. http://www.slac.stanford.edu) will not be affected by this change.

This will affect you only if you are using Web-accessible information that resides on one of a small number of unregistered servers and you are using a non-SLAC IP domain (i.e. you are NOT using *.slac.stanford.edu) to connect to the SLAC Web. Those using non-SLAC IP domains are typically SLAC's remote collaborators or SLAC employees working from home but not directly connected to SLAC (e.g., logging in from Stanford accounts).

How will you know?

Again, access to the SLAC central servers (e.g. http://www.slac.stanford.edu) will not be affected by this change. If you encounter access problems to the central servers, you should report this to the SCS Help Desk.

If you are connecting to another SLAC server (a URL with SLAC in the address but typically a longer or slightly different address than that of the central servers) and you get an error message from your browser saying something to the effect that it couldn't find/connect to the server, you should do one of two things:

1. Send an email to the page/information owner first. It may be that the owner chose not to register the server or not to move the information to a registered server, and so it is now only accessible internally. It could also be that, although we worked hard to contact everyone, the proper person was overlooked in the process of identifying, notifying and working with the owners of these servers.
2. If you do not know whom to contact, send email to the Web Server Registrar who will identify and work with the page or server owner. Please send the registrar as much information as possible about the URL you were trying to reach.

Background:

This action is a result of a policy developed jointly by the Web Technical Committee and the Computer Security Committee and approved by SLAC's Associate Directors' Committee on Computing. The implementation is being coordinated by the Web Coordinating Committee which has worked closely with the each division's Web support coordinators to ensure the minimum amount of negative impact.

SLAC maintains central Web servers for use by all groups at SLAC to reduce the need for multiple servers. Although we strongly encourage using SLAC's central Web servers, there may be reasons to run a local server. However, unrestricted, externally-accessible servers pose serious security risks. The implementation of this part of the SLAC Web Security policy is an attempt to minimize the risks while continuing to provide needed external access.

For further information see the SLAC Web Security Policy. If you need to provide off-site access to your Web server or pages and have not yet done so, please fill out the Web Server Registration Form.

If you have further questions or concerns:

Please email the Web Server Registrar at: web-server-registar@slac.stanford.edu or contact Pat Kreitz at: pkreitz@slac.stanford.edu.

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