[thelist] RE: [OT] blaster worm punishment

[Kristian Rink]

Hello Val, list...


On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:41:35 +0200
Val Paliy <valeriypaliy at yandex.ru> wrote:

> What  really  helps is a good fire wall. You do not have to purchase a
> huge,  costly  corporate  solution  if you are, for example, running a
> Windows-based  computer  at home. Do not blame MS for everything - the
> way  I  see it is this - when you install their OS onto a machine, you
> have  to  supply it with a set of tools, tweakers, etc. that will make
> your  OS function the way you want it. It's sort of "Build it yourself
> after you buy it" thing.

To throw in a rather unpopular thought on that, here: Sometimes it ain't
just about adding new blinking tools and gimmicks and useless crap like
ZoneAlarm (running a firewall atop a workstation doesn't really make
things better), you should be aware that adding software to your system
just increases its complexity and also the chance to run into severe
software failures. A very basic recommendation, so, is just to get some
things set up right, to either learn how to do things the right way or
to (if too lazy or too short on time for that) let someone who knows do
that for you. Actually, some of our customers were struck by severe
virus attacks lately, and the reason obviously used to be the same all
the time: They didn't know what they were doing... "Surfing the web" on
Windows XP with administrative privileges surely ain't a good idea, same
it ain't clever to trust that user accounts are restricted enough to
prevent your system from being severely damaged in case something goes
wrong; same way those folks violently resist the idea of running
software a _little_ more secure - why use Firefox or Thunderbird if MSIE
and Outlook Express comes shipped with your PC? Of course, every
software is buggy, but some is more than others. Computer and/or ISP
advertisement sometimes is making things all so easy, "just get your
computer, click on "start", get connected...". Doing so nowadays is the
best way to be doomed...

Just my $0.02 on that, now tar and feather me. :)
Kris


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