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Originally Posted by TheBlueRaja
Love this bit...
Oh hello Mr robber, how can i help you today - well, Mr Security guard I was hoping to grab some loot from the house if you dont mind.
No Problem Mr Robber, if you nip round the back the owner has left their window open. Oh Thank you Mr Security guard.
How much more secure is that....?
Idiot. |
OK. Turn the tables. How would you react if Microsoft were doing the same thing? I am not saying they don't, but if they did, can you imagine the reaction? At the very least, all the Firefox users on the board would be crowing about how the Mozilla foundation would never do this.
I am not defending Microsoft, but it does seem that in the computing world, there is one rule for them and one for everyone else. I seem to remember that Mac users were strangely silent when Apple sat on a patch for a major TCP/IP vulnerability in Mac OSX for nearly two months.
Anyway, I thought part of the advantage of open source software is vulnerabilities should be spotted and corrected quickly?
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"We have to remember that all software has security vulnerabilities"
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That, for me, is the most important part of Paul's first post. We, as users, should remember that. We should do the following
- Make sure the machine is behind a firewall: If your router has a firewall, use that. Also install Zonealarm or another software firewall
- Make sure any software is fully up to date. IMO, this includes checking Windows update (or Apple's software update) and downloading any patches.
- Make sure that any users that don't need admin priviliges don't have admin priviliges. Be careful when doing this though, as some software has trouble running on a non admin account. If you do have trouble with this, PM me as I have a lot of experience getting software to run on non-admin accounts.
- Make sure you use anti-spyware software, and also antivirus software.
If you do the above, the impact of any vulnerabilities should be minimized.