Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause
From: Gary Flynn <flynngn () jmu edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:24:40 -0500
Folks, Argue the technical merits of firewalls all you want but keep reality in mind: 1) There are millions of vulnerable computers out there on the net operated by people you have little or no chance of training as a system administrator. 2) Fixing tomorrow's software (whether by not shipping it with open ports or by somehow magically shipping it with no flaws) will not do anything to help the vulnerabilities, exploits, and criminal behavior that are out there TODAY. 3) A firewall is going to make the immediate situation better, not worse. (Except perhaps for the support folks who have to put up with all the silly, worthless, and alarming popups some commercial offerers choose to include in their default installation settings.) Simply put, we are currently in a bad situation. Affixing blame and crying because the solution isn't perfect or doesn't magically and retroactively solve all the problems isn't going to do anything to improve the situation. A firewall will help rectify bad business decisions that led to shipping consumer devices with ports open by default, and shield all the defective software running on those machines. The environment changed under us in the last decade. There is plenty of blame to go around. That said, I wonder if its necessary to push third party products. Windows XP and 2003 ship with ICF...a nice quiet firewall. Windows 2000 has IPSEC policies which, although complicated, can be used to provide a functional incoming communications firewall. Wrap it up with some scripts and an HTA web interface to make it user friendly. 9x has fewer open ports and is slowly going away. While the outbound application filtering is useful, when firewalls become common, then malicious code will incorporate firewall disabling software just as often as they now include SMTP software. Shoot, AV vendors might do us all a favor if code inspection detects firewall API calls or process kills to firewall or AV processes and pops up a warning. :) -- Gary Flynn Security Engineer - Technical Services James Madison University _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause, (continued)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Schmehl, Paul L (Jan 15)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Schmehl, Paul L (Jan 15)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause hggdh (Jan 15)
- Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Mike Shaw (Jan 15)
- January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause tlarholm (Jan 15)
- RE: Re[2]: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Schmehl, Paul L (Jan 15)
- Re[4]: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Joris De Donder (Jan 16)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause James Patterson Wicks (Jan 15)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Schmehl, Paul L (Jan 15)
- Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Brandon Butterworth (Jan 15)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Gary Flynn (Jan 15)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Richard M. Smith (Jan 15)
- January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause tlarholm (Jan 15)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause James Patterson Wicks (Jan 15)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause James Patterson Wicks (Jan 15)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Nicob (Jan 16)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause James Patterson Wicks (Jan 16)
- Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Ron DuFresne (Jan 16)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause James Patterson Wicks (Jan 17)
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- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Jim Race (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Jim Race (Jan 17)
- Message not available