[Nottingham] Paranoid already
Robert Davies
nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
Sun Aug 17 03:20:00 2003
On Saturday 16 Aug 2003 16:09, Michael Leuty wrote:
> 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?
Very little risk from the sound of it, as you don't seem to be offering any
public services. I have heard of one case, where the 'crack' was via a
browser, IIRC it was the jpg library which was open to stack smashing, so all
you had to do, was display the page involved. But that one was fairly
unique, most r00t3d boxen are due to running software with known
vulnerabilities, when providing some service to the Internet.
You should also ask yourself, what do you really have to loose if your machine
was cracked. OK, so it's embaressing if your box is used as part of a Denial
of Service attack, or used to attempt access on sites in the .mil domain, but
you'ld get over it. Hopefully you're not in the habit of storing credit card
numbers, bank details, passwords and encryption keys without the protecting
the information with strong encryption.
Rob