Router/Firewall Recommendation

[Reuben D. Budiardja]

On Friday 25 June 2004 01:20 am, Otto Haliburton wrote:
> most users networks ain't worth the
> time and effort to hack it, 

I'm probably going no where by replying this, except that I hope no one else 
gets this completely wrong view about security.

My friend here used to say "why would someone crack my machine? I have nothing 
of value". Well, the problem here is not the value of your machine. A cracked 
machine can be used to do much more malicious stuff. It's worse when the 
machine is part of a larger local network. Since other computers in a network 
is usually set up to trust a login from their own domain (ie. SSH login, and 
put "ALL :. mydomain.edu" in /etc/hosts.allow), a cracker can easilly get 
into other machines in the network. *Security is alwasy only as good as its 
weakest point*.  

Coupled that with the fact that some people use the same login/password for 
different machines, it's very easy for a cracker to get a pool of cracked 
machines in a network to do more, much more malicious stuff. If that happens, 
who'll get the first red flags ? You, the owner of the cracked machine. Not 
the cracker, but you. It does not matter if it's eventually known that your 
machine was cracked, you and your network still get the red flag from others, 
eg. your collaboration, your business partners, you named it .

The point is, never assume that since you have nothing of value, you're not 
worth to get cracked. If you have that attitude, the possibilty is that you 
will get cracked eventually.

Security is only as good as its weakest point. And the weakest point is 
usually the human factor.

RDB
-- 
Reuben D. Budiardja
Department of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
---------------------------------------------------------
"To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy 
something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy 
Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional 
side effect."
                 - Linus Torvalds -