Hello Bob, Sunday, September 21, 2003, 1:52:18 PM, you wrote:
BG> I'm also an advocate of the Open Source alternatives, but we're BG> dreaming if we start thinking being better than Microsoft equates BG> to being secure. Even beloved OpenSSH (from the OpenBSD folks) BG> has been subject to recent exploits. It STILL takes paying BG> attention and keeping updated to be anything remotely "secure" BG> these days! Yes... this is a 'given'... which I felt it was unnecessary to mention, on a list as savvy as this one.<g> Security is a state of mind first, and a state of equipment and software, second. I don't 'click on stuff', and I have a built in habit of first opening the application, and then opening the file, as a command line parameter, as in: '#emacs file.txt' ... even on my Win98box, I have a command window opened for calling apps, most of the time... or I call them from the 'address bar', if they don't accept parameters. I do some work for a listserver relating to email systems security, and I collect malware as a sort of weird hobby, so I don't run AV-ware in the background, and some of my friends and co-workers send me really strange unidentified stuff from time to time, so I am more cautious than the average computer user. BG> I know it's always a different ballgame when you're running a BG> server that HAS to allow others in (i.e. a public web or shell BG> server). Fortunately, at home, we don't have to do that, so we BG> can fix a lot of problems by simply shutting the appropriate BG> doors and (*ahem*) Windows. :) My home (heh) 'network' has some good functional aspects to it already... one is, that I have three peer networked machines that contain duplicates of all my mission critical applications and hardware configurations... not compressed back-ups. I just wrote up a few DOS batch files (shell scripts on the *nix machines), and run the to move the updated files on my primary machine across the network into the appropriate directories, so my website, scripts, programming, db files, accounting, and customer info, etc. files on the 'shadow' machines. If a machine goes down, all I have to do is flick a KVM switch, and I am back up, with less than a day's data lost... and I can fix the problem at my leisure, knowing that I still have redundancy. BG> A PERFECT use for an "aging" box. Let it serve as the protector BG> for the rest. Much easier to concentrate on one place for BG> security rather than many! I like old machines, and used parts... cheap I eventually want layered security... so that if one layer is cracked, other layers will remain. Little things, like possibly setting up my client and financial dbases, so that the tables are encrypted, when not actually being accessed. This stuff takes time and study. a couple years ago... when I first joined this list, I was essentially clueless, and didn't know it. Now, I am clueless... and know it!<g> There is value, in knowing How much I don't know. -wittig http://www.robertwittig.com/ -weblog http://radio.weblogs.com/0128450/ A business is as honest as its advertising. . To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
