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

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From: exibar at thelair.com (Exibar)
Subject: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause

>
> >   correct, but I'm not talking about ONLY catching e-mail viruses,
that's
> > not the only reason you install A/V software on your desktop.
>
> Are you aware of any A/V desktop software for Linux?  I'm not.  So even
> if I wanted to run A/V on our desktops, I couldn't.

yes, Mcafee has one, I'm sure there are others as well.

>
> >    Without A/V you'll also have the problem of people clicking on links
and
> > inadvertantly downloading a backdoor or a rootkit.
>
> I don't let my employees run as root, so the danger is quite small, as
long
> as we keep our boxes up-to-date.
>
Always a smart thing to do, but it's basically the same as not allowing
users to be local admin of their windows box.  Joe users off the street
isn't going to run the Linux install like that though, they'll want to run
as root because it's their box and they want to be God on it.

  If you always perform due diligence, apply all patches as soon as they are
available, run behind a firewall, educate your users, run "non-mainstream"
OS and apps, you'll limit your exposure to worms and viruses.  But your
never 100% protected, even with A/V software loaded you run some risk,
although very minimal.
   In stiving for 100% you'll reach a point around 98% secure that you can
no longer use the computer because the restrictions are too tight.  You just
have to accept that risk, such as you are accepting that risk when you don't
run A/V software.  If that risk is acceptable to you, then there you have
it.

 Exibar