[Sheflug] Re: Mail server

[Richard Ibbotson <nospam [at] sheflug.co.uk>]

Richard

> Oh I know.. and I agree with you.
> And with the proliferation of DSL, and Cable in the states, It's
> expected to some degree, that even home users have a reasonable
> amount of bandwidth, and permanent connections.

Well, the whole thing seems to be getting a bit out of hand with some 
home users on DSL who have never heard of something called a 
firewall.  Bound to cause trouble for everyone else ?

> But most of the stuff still applies, though maybe in need of
> tweaking a little.

Yes

> It isn't the job of the exchange, or your ISP to filter traffic.
> And, after reading many arguments, and complaints by users of
> American ISPs who had port 80 filtered, in an attempt to stop Code
> Red, many many people, don't want their ISP filtering their
> traffic.

Perhaps the people who own the exchange should be more interested in 
internal firewalls ?  Now that there is more DSL around.  Although, 
looking at BTs track record on security applied to software it 
doesn't seem to be all that good.  And .... Telewest ?  Perhaps I 
shouldn't say anything ?

> The general fact is, most of the scans to your system, are script
> kiddies with very little knowledge of what they are doing, scanning
> subnets for systems that their scripts will exploit, there's not
> real motivation to attack *your* machine, just any machine they
> can.

Well, it might be for you but not for me.  My own logs look like a 
Hans Cristien Anderson fairy tale.  </being polite and not using 
unpleasant words>

> Keep up to date with patches, put a decent packet filter between
> you and them, and do all the other stuff security docs recommend.

Yes, it should work but I've come across several situations where it 
didn't.  Kind of .... script kiddie and consultant get together and 
they form a temporary partnership :)  Seen it happen once or twice.

Thanks


-- 
Richard

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