Flaw could unleash another Slammer

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Very good advice, thanks

Especially on the firewall and NAT, I use a sonicwall telecommuter firewall device tha sits between my dsl modem and my ethernet hub. The firewall blocks incoming ports 135-139 as well as tens of thousands of other unneeded ports. BTW, you can also turn these ports off on each PC if you want, it is pretty easy but almost nobody seems interested in doing that yet no one in my management has ever been able to give me a good reason as to why. I use iTunes, chat on yahoo, internet phone and it all works great ( the best piece of Windows application software I have used in years comes form Apple) and I have not had a worm or virus on my home network in over 4 years (when I opened an infected XL spreadsheet without scanning it with AV first -- my bad). I NAT my 3 boxes; Mandrake Linux/Windows2000 server dual boot, XP and PowerBook at home just as we do at our workplace. I open only the ports I need to get web, mail etc but kill all others. The problem for most comsumers is that they really have no idea on this stuff. They accept the default settings and tend to use MS since most see at work. Thanks to BillG trivalizing system administrator's and the good work that a well trined sysadm can do, most folks think they are safe using MS and are not willing to pay for good security. MS is not inherently safe or unsafe since you can open up a *Nix or Apple box to attack very easily -- they all can be very chatty, it is how you set up the environment they operate in. It seems to me that most consumer boxes on broadband are sitting ducks. MS won't help them, they seem incapable so far in helping consumers develop good habits and perhaps people need to look in the mirror and ask themselves some hard questions before they hook up to broadband. Perhaps all dsl/cable broadband providers modems should come with a basic firewall in place given the lameness of the MS firewall in XP. I would never set up a firewall on any windows box -- not at all trustworthy given the many vulnerabilities of the OS. So a firewall device, either stand alone or intergrated into the modem, seems to me to be the best solution for the home user.

Posted by: Sunny Jalolly   Posted on: 12/10/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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