Re: Dealing with MS Netmeeting & H.323

[Henry Hertz Hobbit <hhhobbit () icarus weber edu>]

On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Hal wrote:

>      
>     I'm wondering if anyone has had much luck securing
> Microsoft's Netmeeting product? This topic has been
> discussed here and on other lists. People usually just
> throw up their hands when dealing with it.  What's the
> best advice?
>
> In summary here's what  I found out about it..  

... the rest omitted

Given what you have found, I can understand people
throwing up their hands! Looking at how previous and
current firewalls are constructed, it sounds like the
whole firewall paradigm must change to suit Microsoft!

I once installed version control software from Microsoft
and others (PVCS, et al) for a company that wanted to test
the different software packages for version control. The
first instruction for Microsoft's was to NOT install it
as root, but as a NORMAL user. Since PVCS is installec by
the pvcs user this didn't seem all that unusual. But the
directory you installed the software in had to be mode 777
(Unix). After the install was finished ALL the directories
and files were mode 777! If Microsoft programmers thought
that some programmer was going to curb their impulse to take
advantage of that scenario when they felt that they were too
far behind, they were idiots.

Why is it that Microsoft can't seem to get off its high horse
and do some studying of the way others are doing things
(especially firewalls) before they come up with something?
Unless they want to build the firewall, they should harmonize
with what is already there. They need to understand that even
schools today are going to have to firewall themselves for
protection. And the scuttlebutt among managers a year or so
ago was that Windows-NT was going to replace Unix? Sheesh! If
I was in charge of the Novell servers I wouldn't be shifting
away from anything other than the IPX to IP, ON the Novell
server - easier management, fewer people required, . . .

Henry Hertz Hobbit