full-disclosure - Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause

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From: cmh at nmi.net (Chris Harrington)
Subject: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause


>No, it's telling them not to drive a Pinto when they could drive
something safer.
It may be safer but the average desktop user couldn't drive it. Hence the
proliferation of Windows on the desktop. Some 92% if memory serves me??

>You are very much safer.  Our mail server receives on the average day 70
viruses from cracked Windows machines, and none from cracked Linux
machines. We still receive several Nimda hits a day, and none from cracked
Linux machines.
Safer yes.....but the usability issue for a lot of desktop users still
exist. Things are moving forward in that area. RH 9 with the Ximian
desktop is pretty user friendly.

>A default install of a modern Linux distro includes firewalling rules by
default, and is fairly safe.
Hmmm....sounds like a personal firewall to me.

>Because it is impossible to use Windows safely; the very design of the
operating system is flawed.
Typical opinion from the Linux crowd. Yes Windows security issues, that
not news. If Linux is so great, why isn't it on more desktops??

>This is not just my opinion; it's also that of Bruce Schneier and many
other people, some of whom lost their jobs for speaking out.
It's still an opinion, one to which I disagree. I generally hear this from
people who do not have enough experience with Windows to be able to secure
it properly. If you are referring to Dan Geer, you'd better do a little
research as to why he was fired. It was not for pointing out MS flaws.

>Why?  We have no machines that are susceptible to the viruses that are in
the wild.  We do, of course, drop .exe, .com, etc attachments on our mail
server, but that's just to save disk space and stop annoying messages from
filling our mailboxes.
We have since 1999, and haven't had any problem.  If you don't use
Windows, you don't need anti-virus software.
I would still use AV software, but I am paranoid :) If you don't have AV
software how do you know you get 70 viruses form cracked Windows machines
daily?

Regards,

--Chris

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