How often do you rebuild your Hard Drive?

Because of these same "reality check" reasons, that the public CERT
has become private, and the government version is struggling.
I have left out the economic factor; if one collects exploit info,
then one can sell the info to gusinesses that need to be kept as up to
date as possible. Make it a freebie and it then has no commercial
value.

 

.....and these "automatic update" doors are *rather* inviting to the
malware kiddies....

 

I fail to see how Firefox automatically checking for an updated version is
open to exploit. I also fail to see how running up2date on a linux box is
open to exploit. Sure, someone could hack ftp.mozilla.org and put a
compromised version of Firefox up, but what are the odds of that?

 

So if I use an older version of Linux or the FF browser I'm vulnerable???

Who woulda thunk it!!!

 

I just did a deep scan on my system, WinXP Pro patched with the latest IE
and came up with 0.

 

Sure. Like anything else, you need reasonably up to date versions of
software to be protected. Except if I don't update Firefox on my RH9 or
Fedora Core 2 server, it doesn't allow someone to compromise my server with
the same ease that people do it on Win32. Do you remember recently when
IIS was compromised to insert code that exploited IE, and everyone up to
and including major banking sites had their servers compromised and were
distributing a virus/worm to all their IE users? Never heard of that
problem with Apache or Firefox.

 

Anyone who knows how to secure an NT based O/S using IIS didn't have the
exploit either. Why was ADODB even on a Web server? ADODB has no business
being on the Web Server that is secured properly with a chance for it to
be instantiated through program code. If the O/S along with its file
system, registry, user accounts and IIS are not secured properly, the Web
Server is not secure.

Duane

 

Besides practicing good security, wasn't that vulnerability already
discovered and a patch available? I remember some article that polled sys
admins and their security practices were abysmal. a good portion of them had
unpatched boxes running, just waiting to be hit. That's why the hackers go
after MS ware, like Willie Sutton said, "that's where the money is."

 

Lazy admins are always a day late and dollar short, blowing things off or
don't know how or what they are doing to begin with. Over in the
comp.securty.firewall NG a few months back, I had an admin using a
Windows Small Business server that had IIS compromised with a Trojan on
the computer. At least the person knew that much. I had to instruct the
admin on how to find the exploit, which all the little AV and Trojan
detection crap was thrown at it and not found, with the proper tools and
then provide the information such as books and links on how to properly
secure the O/S and IIS that is being exposed to the public Internet.

How many admins are out there like that?

Duane

 

Judging by the state of the Internet and how fast some of these nasties are
able to propagate, way too many.
SP2 for XP tries to make home PCs a little safer but it's a Band-Aid
approach as well. MS should have done a better job with this SP.

 

All I want out of SP2 is IE, which I would like to implement some of its
new features like enabling security features and not have IE ask to allow
or disallow the security feature action, which are pop-up windows that
have been moved out of the way, from what I understand. I will wait a
couple of months and let things settle down before I implement SP 2 on
the machines. The pop-up add blocker I would like to use too. Other than
that, I'll secure the NT based O/S(s) to fit my needs.

Well, at least MS is trying to make XP a closed O/S and hopefully will
get better with closed MS O/S(s) releases in the future. I don't care
what O/S is being used out there. The *clue less* will find a way to get
themselves compromised.

Duane

 

Aer you trying to say that the update adderss and/or procedure cannot
be compromised (in the computer by virii)?