nanog mailing list archives

Re: New Computer? Six Steps to Safer Surfing


From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists () gmail com>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 04:56:42 +0530


On Sun, 19 Dec 2004 17:47:28 -0500 (EST), Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com> wrote:
There is a lot of wishful thinking, but security people seem to be
very bad about actually testing their theories to see if they are
effective.  A lot of snake-oil gets sold using the theory it can't hurt.

Many Home/SOHO PC's are self-infected by the owners.  Network firewalls
and anti-virus software are very poor at preventing that.  The really
scary thing is the infection rate of Home/SOHO computers with
AV/firewalls is higher than "naked" computers.

er, so having no firewall or antivirus software on your home broadband
connection with an XP box hooked onto it would be just as safe as an
XP box having $software_fw and frontended by $hw_firewall that at
least does NAT and a bit of packet filtering on the side?

I'd be interested in seeing the study you're quoting ..

thanks
--srs
-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists () gmail com)


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