[Nottingham] Paranoid already

[Michael Leuty]

Dear everyone,

Hello. Let me introduce myself as a new subscriber to the Nottingham LUG 
mailing list. I'm only an amateur, but I've been messing around with 
computers at home since the days of Windows 3.0. In fact, considering 
the amount of time I've spent it's surprising I don't know more.  :-(

However, I've been running Mandrake on & off for the past year, and now 
have very little reason to reboot into Another OS since I found that I 
can run Quicken on CrossOver Office.

Browsing through the archives of the LUG mailing list, I was a bit 
worried by Johannes Kling's report that one of his customer's machines 
was cracked, and I wondered to what extent a home user like me is at 
risk of such things?

I'm running Mandrake 9.1 and have applied all the security updates that 
have been released. My internet connection is via a little black box 
called an "IX66 Internet Gate" which contains both an ADSL modem and a 
firewall. I've also installed the "shorewall" firewall which came with 
Mandrake.

Is there any more I could reasonably do, and how much risk might I be 
running?

Yours nervously,

Mike

-- 
Michael Leuty