[clug] Secure your Internet facing stuff (was Re: googlebot doing funny things in logs)

Sam Couter sam at couter.id.au
Thu Jun 16 05:47:43 MDT 2011


Bob Edwards <bob at cs.anu.edu.au> wrote:
> Without wanting to marginalise the horror of cyber-bullying (and
> all other forms of bullying), especially as a parent, I would
> still argue that of all the many activities I am involved in, I am
> least likely of all to be seriously injured or killed by a "worm",
> "trojan", "virus", "spam", "phish", "DDOS attack" or similar coming
> from the Internet, from poorly-"secured" web sites or otherwise.

A few scenarios to consider:

1) Money from your bank account disappears, the bank's access logs show
the transfer request came from your computer, you can't pay your mortgage
or rent, end up on the street, contract pneumonia and die.

2) Somebody commits a serious crime (say, distributing kiddy porn) from
your network, you end up in jail, are shanked with a sharpened piece of
brocolli at dinner and die.

3) Somebody orders the My Little Pony DVD collection using your credit
card and your computer and has it delivered to your address, in garishly
bright non-discreet packaging, and you die from embarrassment.

> On the other hand, if I was in the "security biz", I would definitely
> want to make sure that more resources were poured into "securing"
> the 'net. Especially as some particularly responsible people think
> that it is a good idea to hook, eg., nuclear fuel processing plants
> up to it...

I'm not in the security biz. I'm the guy who has to put up with spam and
other annoyances because of the general lack of security on the net.
-- 
Sam Couter         |  mailto:sam at couter.id.au
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
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