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Subject: Re: top ten unix security vulnerabilities

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 14:05:55 10/19/03

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On October 19, 2003 at 16:19:33, margolies,marc wrote:

>thank you for your response. and i am sure you are right about the majority of
>machines being safe.
>what does trouble me as a practical matter, since I do use the internet to
>exchange information (and do e-commerce with other people's Apache servers) is
>that there is little difference to the net effect on my personal security
>whether a vulnerability exists on my end or in transmission or on someone else's
>machine because I cannot remediate my threat. Yet I very much appreciate your
>re-enforcing the idea that the home user's machine remains robust and
>functional.
>

There are plenty of "evasive actions" you can take.  Block trouble-making
IP domains (there are many that are well-known).  Or only allow traffic
between yourself and _specific_ remote hosts.  Turn off all unneeded net
services to block those holes entirely.

Our CIS linux firewall has not been broken into in almost 3 years now.  My
linux box hasn't been touched in 5 years.  Our news/ftp server has been up
for at least a couple of years without any problems at all...

It can be done...  even on _highly_ visible machines like my ftp box.

>
>On October 18, 2003 at 20:35:07, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On October 18, 2003 at 04:18:01, margolies,marc wrote:
>>
>>>http://www.lavasoftnews.com/theeye/i11/a2.html
>>>
>>> http://isc.sans.org/top20.html
>>>
>>>just when i thought it was safe to come out of the water----LANDSHARK!
>>
>>Most new unix systems are not subject to many of those.  IE who runs a
>>machine that allows RPC from the internet?  Not here where I am.  Ditto for
>>several of the other things.  SSH is _not_ insecure.  Old versions are,
>>of course.
>>
>>Apache is a problem but very few machines run a web server, most user machines
>>do not.



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