In message <cad6ajgqeqqek91rzmwu_fy1ndkpbzat4ku2xkbwwohfgxrb...@mail.gmail.com> Cameron Byrne writes: > > > > Cameron, > > > > I was arguing against firewalls as a security solution. You seemed to > > have missed the whole point of the email. Pleae reread it. > > > > Got it, no firewalls, you are against them. > > > At most you could say that I conceded that firewalls are a marginal > > improvement (and therefore won't go away). For the provider it may be > > whether 90% of their users end up running malware or 10% (cite?). > > When there is a new remote exploit discovered it limits the damage. > > Got it, you think firewalls are required because gradma is running > BIND 8. > > But, my point is that sp3 windows xp has a default on firewalls. So, > assume 10yo software, what exploits are we preventing? How often do > they occur? > > I am just looking for specific data so we can make a data supported > decision. > > Cb
As far as I am concerned you may have come close to winning this argument with the statistic that 0.16% of hosts predate firewalls in the host OS. OTOH - I don't think the last windows remote exploit predates when XP was introduced. Search for "microsoft windows and remote exploit" at http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/html/search to get plenty of data to support your decisions. Here is a 2008 example where a firewall would help: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/827267 . It took a few minutes to find an exploit like this in the very long list. Most attacks do involve getting the user to view a web page or open an email attachment or something like that. For example http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/230057 (that's 2011). And in such a case a firewall usually doesn't help. There are tons of these. Curtis _______________________________________________ homenet mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/homenet
