[rescue] Can someone do me a favor (fast 'net, CD-burner)

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Joshua Boyd writes ...
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 12:06:25PM -0500, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:
>
> > By "directly connected" you mean with no separate firewall,
> > right?
>
> Directly connected to me means that any port of the machine is somehow
> directly exposed.  If the machine is behind a NAT, and the NAT isn't
> configured to forward ports to that machine, I consider it safe,
> otherwise I don't.  Maybe I'm paranoid or naive here, but that's my
> view.

Mine, too.

I'm on a semi-dynamic IP address (it changes but only occasionally), behind
a NAT firewall.  It can forward ports, but doesn't, except the one VPN port
my laptop needs to connect to my office.  All the "checkers" I've run from
various websites seem to think I'm OK, for what _that's_ worth.  If anyone
wants to give it a try, let me know your results.

The exception logging on the ISDN router/firewall isn't very good, but it
does show probes of various kinds from time to time.  My ISP (blarg.net)
seems hipper than most, so I expect they choke a lot of stuff off before it
ever gets to me.

Or maybe the haxorz just don't bother with anything but cable users anymore;
$DIETY knows that there are enough open, unpatched, lubed-up-and-bent-over
Windows boxes out there for the taking....

I used to think that having a Windows box directly on the 'net was OK.  My
reasoning was that a cracker could knock one over, but not do anything
useful with it.  <clouseau>nut eny meure</clouseau>.  Some bunch of
jackasses claim to have commandeered 450,000 Windows machines on broadband
connections, and are renting them out as spamming proxies and DDOS sources.
Even if they actually command only 10% of that number, it's pretty
frightening.

Anybody wanna buy stock in a cast-iron computer condom company?

-Shel