Re: FBI tells the public to call their ISP for help

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Jack Bates wrote:
> May I recommend developing an in house method for allowing the customer only 
> access to your servers (web, dns, proxy, etc), and then apply filters for 
> everything else except for tcp/80. If you wanted to be additionally paranoid, 
> you could even allow only established tcp/80 connections back to the 
> customer.
>
> Once updated, customer could establish contact to have filters removed, or an 
> automated web process you be created.
>
> It's a ton of work, and there are any number of ways to do it. A lot depends 
> on your network. It can be done, though.

I went down that road several times, and there are many issues with what 
you have described which won't work for how Microsoft distributes its 
updates and patches; and with the user.  Microsoft has enabled Windows 
with enough features, users can infect their machine with only TCP/80.
Please review the archives for details from several years ago, and at
some point you will end up needing to violate the written Microsoft 
licenses.

Its not a technical problem (although engineers seem to like to think 
everything is), its a legal issue with Microsoft's lawyer and licenses.