Re: Protect and survive

[Nigel Orr <Nigel.Orr@xxxxxxx>]

At 09:52 11/08/00 +0200, you wrote:
>2. We all know that there are wan***s out there who take great pleasure
in
>hacking websites, mailservers etc so what are people doing to protect
>themselves.

And I'm not allowed to mention the 'L' word?  hmmm...

I can speak for one 'L' server which I administer at work.  It's been up
for about 6 weeks or so, the address has never been publicly released
(except for one mention on here, but that didn't change things much!).  At
least once a week, someone tries to hack it, in a variety of ways.  After
one attempt came a bit too close for success, I've made some changes so I
get more of a picture of what's going on, which is how I know how regularly
attempts are made.

If it hadn't been 'product L', I'd probably still be blissfully unaware
that some little toerag had managed to get anywhere.  Fortunately 'product
L's designers are a very 'open' lot, so, unlike some other well known
systems, when an exploit is discovered, they're brave enough to admit it,
and sometimes release a patch within hours.  The only reason this machine
was vulnerable was that we'd just installed it, from a CD a few months old,
and not got round to updating it.

Having seen the amount of activity on this one, low profile, system, I
honestly wouldn't even think of running Windows on a machine with 24/7
connectivity, where even I can think of half a dozen things to try to get
past it... you're just too isolated from the system to see what is really
happening.

>one more thing, please don't suggest I install Linux - please.

OK.

>machines, or are you using one machine for the lot... (I just know
someone
>is going to mention Linux here ;-)   ).

Mmmf mmmf mmmfffmm mnmfffnux.  :-)

There are a variety of security sites around, http://www.cert.org will give
you an idea of the sort of exploits that are going on (on all OS's!), and
pointers to other places.

Nigel


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