Fault vs. feature in the 'mnt-by' mechanism

Folks,

I would like to draw your attention to a fact that might be intended as
a feature but what I consider more or less as a fault: I can't find any
good reason that it is possible to protect objects which are previously
unprotected or protected with an own mnt object also with other strong
("password") mnt objects without knowing the password of this
maintainer.

So it is possible for almost everyone to enter a bunch of bogus objects
in the RIPE database without protection and then - as a 2nd step - to
update all these objects, now including our company's mnt objects - thus
we will become "responsible" for these bogus objects in a way, but we
won't get aware of it.

This may not be so significant for person objects, but is definitely
much more serious regarding AS or route objects - so a redesign of this
protection mechanism should be discussed at least.

Please see 

	http://www.ripe.net/cgi-bin/whois?sg4456-ripe

as an example.

Best regards,

	Carsten Schiefner
-- 

Carsten Schiefner               mailto:carsten.schiefner at tcpip-gmbh.de
TCP/IP GmbH, Berlin (Germany)                 http://www.tcpip-gmbh.de
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