RE: The home user problem returns

["Tina Bird" <tbird () precision-guesswork com>]

> Now, look at Internet security. If I educate 50% of the 
> population about the
> need to worry about security, I still lose - horribly - 
> because the other 50% of
> my population fails and their machines are used to attack the 
> educated 50%!!
> That wouldn't be a problem except for transitive trust(*) - a 
> big chunk, I have
> no idea how big, of the educated 50% would find themselves 
> vulnerable to
> attacks from trusted parties and would be vulnerable, and 
> then you'd very
> quickly be left with the only survivors being those who 
> didn't trust anyone.

hmm. transitive trust is certainly a big problem. however...if your "aware"
population follows a couple of obvious rules (install patches*; run an AV
and maybe a PFW**), they're more than likely not gonna get hammered by the
vicious mindless auto-propagating crap. so all of a sudden your disease
isn't rampaging.

the sophisticated attacks that are likely to affect the "aware" folks are
less likely to spread on their own. at least that's how it was while i was
at stanford.

cheers - tbird

--

* yeah, i know. turd polishing. but just enable auto-updates on your OS of
choice and stop thinking about it.

** i'm unconvinced about the value of firewalls on an endpoint system if
you're able to disable incoming connections. when i'm anywhere but in my
living room, i disable the MS client for networks on my laptop, and all
those nasty MS-protocol-borne attacks go away.

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