full-disclosure - Flawed arguments (Was all that other crap about PFW day)

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Message-ID: <15533237421C6E4296CC33A2090B224A54C9E3@UTDEVS02.campus.ad.utdallas.edu>
From: pauls at utdallas.edu (Schmehl, Paul L)
Subject: Flawed arguments (Was all that other crap about PFW day)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Erik van Straten [mailto:emvs.fd.3FB4D11C@....tn.tudelft.nl] 
> Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 5:05 AM
> To: Schmehl, Paul L
> Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.netsys.com
> Subject: RE: [Full-Disclosure] Flawed arguments (Was all that 
> other crap about PFW day)
> 
> > > With ABS you can drive much closer to the car in front of 
> you. With 
> > > AV and a PFW people tend to believe it is safe to run any exe (or 
> > > hta). Marketing helps making people believe this.
> > >
> > I have to agree with you here.  It's been made obvious to me by the 
> > posts today in this thread.
> 
> Explain this contradiction in your rant and we may talk 
> 
The previous poster complains that PFWs fool people into thinking that
they are more secure.  Several other posters have cited the fact that
most *nixes now come with "the firewall enabled", which obviously means
they think that makes *nix more secure.  So, they believe, simply by
having iptables (or whatever) enabled, they are more secure.

Yet they see no contradiction between their belief in the added security
of *nix firewalls and their contention that Windows PFWs give a false
sense of security with no real benefit.  I have to admit, on a security
list, I'm a bit surprised to see this sort of flawed argumentation, but
I guess I shouldn't be.  Their hatred of Microsoft blinds them.

Paul Schmehl (pauls@...allas.edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
The University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu/~pauls/