I thought I'd defer to those who have a clue, but, I don't see any
replies. So...
Security risks are usually exploits discovered after the programs are
released. So the "fix" would be to get (or build) a newer version of
something. That could get involved.
Then again, most attacks come through open ports. These small distros
aren't going to be running many servers, and you can probably turn off any
that are present. (Thinking back to trying to do ssh, ftp, etc into
Knoppix--they weren't running...) To do what you say, you may not need
anything running.
Camped behind a coyote firewall, I don't get any connection attempts
(except from the firewall and the dns server). I think iptables might be
up to this...it's built into the kernel, I think...just need to configure
it (and maybe in the distros it's already set up to do this very thing).
In my experience the biggest risk seems to be the person sitting in front
of the web browser.
I take some comfort in the fact that it takes some time to download the
latest exploit via dialup. Also that you're not always connected. And
come to think of it, CD-launched distros are very hard to alter...
Barry
Longs for the good old days of the 80MB system with word processor.
I've been looking at small linux distributions again for some "older"
systems, like PII-400 and PIII-550 with 256meg of ram but can't find info
on how secure they are. I've looked at Zenlive (slackware), Damn Small
Linux, puppy linux, and vector linux, but can't seem to find info on what,
if any, security is available, installed, and/or enabled. I'd like to use
something like these, installed on hard disks, utilizable for basic word
processing (not necessarily Open office but something smaller with fonts
and margins), web browsing and email via phone/dialup setups.
Any info would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Rich
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