Security and the internet

[lithium.]

Originally posted by paulewog
/me reminds DNA to keep it civil

Even commercial sites like Yahoo and Egghead have been hacked more or less.

But I don't think a personal server has as much of a problem as that, and certainly not as much from those really good hackers that CAN hack places like Egghead

But firewalls can only help, yeah.... they get REALLY annoying sometimes, if you use the computer for personal use, though

I agree with you on the person servers don't have much of a problem. But right now with all the hackers and viruses going about on both Windows and Unix, and Yes there is starting to be new worms hitting Unix, that we all should be using firewalls. I use unix all the time, and if i didn't have a firewall i know someone would have already rooted my linux server.

 

[DNAunion]

DNAnion: Windows now has a basic firewall built into the OS. Does Linux? Does "real" Unix?

 

[DNAunion]

Seebs: FWIW, most of my Unix systems are just sitting there with full IP connectivity. On the other hand, the Windows machines sit behind a firewall, and play video games.

DNAunion: Not worth too much. What you personally use Windows machines for is irrelevant.

Instead of what a single person does, let's look at what the business world does. Does it use Windows machines for playing video games? Hardly. Do you know what Microsoft's biggest money maker is? Windows OSs? Nope. IE? Nope. SQL Server? Nope. It's their MS Office. And what comes in that? Video games? Nope. Productivity software used by businesses to solve real-world business problems: applications for creating, editing, and linking/embedding spreadsheets (Excel), databases (Access), presentations (PowerPoint), word processing documents (Word), etc., as well as a common programming language (VBA) that can be used to enhance/extend the functionality of those objects.

 

[paulewog]

/me uses Windows to do everything except eat.

/me doesn't have a fireball

/me is on dialup though, harder to hack those

 

[lithium.]

Originally posted by DNAunion
DNAnion: Windows now has a basic firewall built into the OS. Does Linux? Does "real" Unix?

Yes Unix has a firewall, one of the best. Its called iptables and ipchains.

 

[seebs]

DNAUnion: You're partially mistaken. The majority of what Windows systems run these days is Outlook viruses.

And yes, every Unix-like system I'm aware of comes with at least one firewall thing. My favorite is the "ipfw" that comes with BSD/OS (not the same as the one in FreeBSD), but any of them are quite capable of filtering out unwanted packets.

Someone managed to do an ipfw hack on BSD/OS that eats Code Red packets silently, so a web server just doesn't see the attack in the first place. Nice toy.

 

[paulewog]

Oh yeah. Microsoft is your worst virus by all means.

Outlook can give your computer a virus without you opening the attachment, it's very common

my church gets viruses all the time. And guess who get's called?!

 

[lithium.]

Originally posted by paulewog
Oh yeah. Microsoft is your worst virus by all means.

Outlook can give your computer a virus without you opening the attachment, it's very common

my church gets viruses all the time. And guess who get's called?!

yep you are completely right.

 

[DNAunion]

DNAunion: Just so we are all clear, I am not pro-Microsoft. Actually, I would pigeonhole myself in the anti-MS camp. One of my 4 Wintel computers locked up at work just yesterday, which set me back a couple of hours (not like I don't have enough to do already!). And yes, as a couple of others pointed out, Outlook is a real security concern too.

A bit off the topic of security, but on track with the "booooo Microsoft" thing...

When I started with computers Lotus 1-2-3 was easily the dominate spreadsheet. But once MS Excel got its teeth into the market, it was bye-bye Lotus 1-2-3.

And then there was dBase - easily the leader in desktop databases. But then MS came out with Access and FoxPro and it was bye-bye dBase.

And then there was Novel - which had a huger portion of the corporate LAN business. Then along came Windows NT and Novel is barely alive anymore.

And then there was Netscape - which had something like 80% of the browser market for a while. Then came alone MS's Internet Explorer and it was basically bye-bye Netscape.

And there was also WordPerfect - which was THE word processor for quite some time. But then along came MS Word and it was bye-bye WordPerfect.

And what about utilities? Many small companies used to make their living off of selling utilities they wrote, such as disk defragmenters and such. Then Microsoft goes and incorporates such things directly into their operating systems, driving the little companies out of business.

When C++ first came to the Windows platform, it was a toss up whether Borland C++ or MS Visual C++ would be the leader (Borland was a leading programming language vendor at the time). Compared to MS Visual C++, you hardly every hear of Borland C++ anymore.

The list goes on and on. Anything Microsoft puts its greedy little hands on it soon dominates. I don't think it is simply a matter of their having better products. Regardless, I think it sucks that one company can monopolize so many different aspects of computing.

So actually, I am all for Linux, Apache server, PHP, and other open source software. I'd like to see MS shoved out of many markets, just like they did to so many others over the years.

Okay, sorry for the diversion from the topic.

 

[Apologist]

Originally posted by Susan
Your best virus security tip:
Don't download attached files from people you don't know, and even if you know the sender, ask them if they sent you the e-mail and attachment before you open it.

There are new viruses that do not have to be opened to execute. Just opening your mailbox in Outlook Express will launch them. There are even web sites now that execute malicious code when you view the page.
My best security tip:

Get Norton's Internet Security and keep the virus definitions up to date!

God bless