Hi All,

Cracking article from InfoWorld with 10 stupid user stories. Not all security related but all good for a laugh.

I had tried to pick my favourite, but that changed with every story I read.

See what you think, and if you can beat them feel free to share

RR

I can't vouch for the authenticity as I'm too young (thank god) but apparently that's how M$ got NT4 through it's security standards: removed network cables, floppy drives, any IO device (keyboard/mouse/etc.) and locked the door. 100% secure...

Looks like the media are starting to report real-life rather than FUD for a change


Full article here

Seems like a variation on a theme, if you've got backups then you shouldn't have a problem (you do have backups don't you).

IMO this should be an easy one for authorities, follow the money.

I've read a few differing stories about this incident.

One of the figures I've heard quoted is that US systems get scanned or attempted compromises 300million times a day, that's a lot of background noise to pick through to find the right answer.

Whilst it is entirely possible that all of these (this and recent) attacks are coming from China, if I (UK citizen) wanted to hit the US systems I might just find myself an unpatched XP machine on a Chinese IP for a jumping point. 'yup, it's the Chinese again, incident closed?

My question from reading this story that I haven't found an answer to so far is, is there evidence to suspect the Chinese in this incident of is it merely Wold's believe due to his aiding of Chinese dissidents?


Of course there is no other way the Chinese officials coud have found out who was living there....

China is becoming a very handy scapegoat at the moment, until there is any evidence one way or another I'd suggest that the attacks are a side-effect of being connected to the internet...

It might by not be unexpected, but from an ethical viewpoint this could be a small step down a slippery slope.

"look...it's right there in the logs. Lets get that IP address off line...."

IMO, the only truely ethical solution to these kinds of attacks is to get your defenses and security to a level where the attacks have no impact. Once your defenses are tight enough that there is no impact then the attackers might just get bored and go home (only in a perfect world I know....).

Two wrongs don't make a right

Depends what I'm doing.

If I'm 'working' I try to stick to CLI, makes simple things look harder and more 1337 so the boss will keep paying the cheques

GUI's can be good when feeling lazy or playing with a new tool as it is often easier to find different switches/features than my scrolling through a few hundred lines of man output looking for 'interesting' options.

Yup, explains why I'm not in the 'black' camp

Don,

that might be the first sensible naming convention I've come across, if nothing else should remove the debate (at least until someone starts arguing the criminal/morality points).

BillV?...... tut tut 

Seconded

From my experience small firms (in any field, not just security) tend to work quite well whilst they remain small. Often the 'good' small firms get taken over/merged with a bigger player, whilst the 'poorer' small firms tend to get bored to too-big-for-their-boots. Reading your post I'd say you fall into the first category, and if you can take oneeyedcarmen's advice and grow your business you shouldn't go far wrong.

Hopefully you'll get a response from someone with experience of going it alone to get a concrete answer. Good luck

Rok,

I don't want to sound rude as I could be missing something (been working for last 28hrs straight ) but isn't IP over a global network called the internet? Can you elaborate further as I'm sure I must be missing something obvious...

Don,

overall I would agree with your analysis of #10 and it should definitely be addressed in a DR plan.

However it is human nature to be more helpful to return full service following a disaster and this can come in the form of reducing security checks to increase speed of operation. If your working environment requires stringent security controls you must ensure that they are enforced at all times to protect against an opportunist strike during a vulnerable moment.

In line with the DR theme, a client of mine recently finished an internal risk assessment. The results suggested that there is a 20% of a plane hitting my facility (despite us not being near an airport or under a flight path), think I need to claim danger money

Good luck

Rob,

cheers for the link. Haven't come across this in the past, I've used (and paid for) Boson Netsim which is decent. I'm downloading now, hopefully should be good (and hopefully the Win Binaries will run under Vista ).

RR