full-disclosure - UTTER HORSESHIT: [was January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause]

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Message-ID: <20040115125504.02AEE97B44@cpo.tn.tudelft.nl>
From: emvs.fd.3FB4D11C at cpo.tn.tudelft.nl (Erik van Straten)
Subject: UTTER HORSESHIT: [was January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause]

"http-equiv@...ite.com" <1@...ware.com>:
> We hereby reject this utter horseshit unreservedly.

Agreed - when it's intended to "protect" aunt Annie's Xmas present.

It just makes NO SENSE to have PC's listening on lots of ports, by 
default on any interface, and then add a PFW to prevent anyone from 
accessing them.

(much like building a wall in front of your house because your doors 
and Windows(TM) have broken locks).

In particular because most Annie's have no clue what IP is, and 
undesired egress traffic easily bypasses PFW's (if the malware hasn't 
shut down the darn thing right away).

Classic PFW = Snake Oil: http://www.samspade.org/d/firewalls.html

If Annie's weren't members of Administrators, and members of 
Administrators would not have access to apps like IE and OE, and 
WindowsUpdate would not require admin privs to download, and there 
wouldn't be so many privesc sploitz, and the FS and registry would 
have much tighter perms by default, PFW's *would* make sense - for 
blocking undesired egress traffic.

That is, provided that the PFW reliably starts before net I/O is 
possible, runs in "Safe Mode With Networking", and is not crowded 
with bugs itself.

Cheers,
Erik