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  Ed, 5 Feb 2001 @ 1:29pm

  
  

  I Give Up

  It just ain't my day on Techdirt -- first I comment on the story about popup browser windows, then the next story is on a web page that has one. I comment on that, saying home wireless LAN is the way of the future, and now there's another story revealing huge security holes in the wireless security protocol.
  
  How about giving me a chance to comment on how poor my investments are doing. Given my luck today, maybe that will make them take off.

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• 

  D.V. Henkel-Wallace, 5 Feb 2001 @ 3:08pm

  
  

  Firewalls are bogus anyway

  A firewall has always been a dumb idea. You have to protect the terminals and equipment.
  Not only can you have an unscrupulous employee, but any visitor can just plug his laptop
  into the RJ-45 in the conference room and be on your net.
  This applies to your home too. Your kid's friend can bring by his PS-2 plug it into the net, and instead of playing Duke Nukem be scouring your PC's disk for porn.
  Maybe this will provide impetus for better-designed PCs and handhelds. But I doubt it.

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  • 

    Phillip, 6 Feb 2001 @ 11:11am

    
    

    Re: Firewalls are bogus anyway

    I don't think firewalls are a bad idea. They provide a good level of security for little complexity and no cost. Eg PMFirewall took me less the 2 mins to install and configure. A firewall doesn't have to be just between your LAN and the outside world, you can also do it on a per box basis. Eg only the IP addresses of your application servers can make DB socket connections to your Oracle server. That way you can restrict access to even someone on the LAN. If someone has physical access to your machine there is nothing you can do to protect yourself totally, be it a Windows or Linux box. And unless you explicity share something then unless the OS is broken even plugging a Dreamcast into your LAN won't let them scan your hard drive. General rules of thumb: increasing security increases complexity, you will hit the law of diminishing returns, only make the cost of breaking the security more than the worth of the information being protected. My best advice is if you want to stop your kids looking at your porn then keep it on removable media such as ZIP disk or CD-ROM which you keep physically locked away somewhere.

    Phillip.

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