Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] clever virus trick

["Dan Boyd" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I'm going to have to disagree with some points here.  I'm not trying to be picky, but I hear many of these arguments a lot.

On 5/2/06, Michael < EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:

> Despite what you say about Mitnick, the guy has balls. If you have not
> read his book you should. It is just interesting the way he could get
> around people to get the information he wanted. It was interesting how
> collecting one piece of innocent information at a time could be turned
> into a backdoor pathway into your computer network, or bank account.
I agree. I don't know if I'd call him a genius but he had the balls and
brains to do some pretty cool stuff. Even if your not into bending and
breaking laws it's still interesting reading about him. I still think
the FBI really fucked him too.

I have read excerpts from Mitnick's book.  I don't know if I would buy his book.  I do not like supporting convicted felons.  Just because I have the know how to break into a system doesn't mean I should.  I always wondered if everything he writes about is true, after all he is a social engineer.  I guess I should thank him though, it's people like him that give me job security.  When I want to read about topics in security I check out the honors papers on the SANS site.
 

As far as viruses go - Don't use shitty platforms like Windows,

What critera are we going by to determine Windows is "shitty"?
 

don't
let files in user directories be executable, and don't write apps, that
work with unknown files, in low level languages that tend to cause bugs
that can make apps be tricked into doing bad things such as executing
non-executable files.

This sort of reminds me of installing and configuring sendmail on Linux.
 

 

For Linux systems it's amazing how much more secure things are if you
just don't let users execute anything they themselves have saved. Most
software on Linux systems, especially for novice users, is delivered in
the form of known packages from trusted sources. That takes care of most
problems especially if the system is setup to automatically install new
packages that have security fixes.

No system is secure, but some are much more secure than others.

I would much rather run a hardened windows system maintained by an experienced administrator  than a  Linux system running every service as root maintained by someone who likes to "put fires out".

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Dan
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