[Nanog] RE: MS is vulnerable

Thu Jan 29 17:56:16 UTC 2004

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Remko Lodder [mailto:remko at elvandar.org] 
> Sent: January 29, 2004 12:43 PM
> To: Vivien M.; 'Jason Lixfeld'
> Cc: doug at nanog.con.com; nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: RE: [Nanog] RE: MS is vulnerable
> 
> 
> It's better to educate your mum how she keeps windows secure. 
> It can be done, there are a lot of Windows machine in the 
> wild out there that are actually almost up to date, (everyone 
> should be that far),

I've managed to educate my dad on the critical updates. He's better at it
than me, actually - when the little icon shows up in the taskbar, he knows
that he's supposed to click on it and do what it tells him to do. Then
again, my dad also takes his car to the dealer the day after he gets a
recall letter, so perhaps he's just more responsible than many... 

My mom's, though, tends to have the little icon staying in the tray, unless
I'm visiting... but I'm still working on educating her :) Much easier to
convince her to click that icon than to make her hand over her American
Express for a shiny new iBook, anyways.

> let her run antivirus software, update it frequently, learn 
> her how to handle unknown email, how to handle weird 
> attachments, delete mails who look suspicious, install a 
> decent windows firewall that allows you to select what should 
> be openend and what should be closed (windows own firewall 
> might be in help her)

Antivirus software, these days, updates itself. If you run the home/SOHO
Norton line, I believe that was added in the 2002 version - the 2001
reminded you to run LiveUpdate, but you actually had to go through the
wizards and stuff each time. No more, now it updates itself and just pops up
a little thingy saying it did so. 

The big problem with "weird attachments" is that they seem to come from a
trusted sender. The usual excuse is "but Joe wouldn't send me a virus", and
it's very hard to make people understand that some computer out there, not
even necessarily Joe's, is sending a virus in Joe's name without Joe knowing
about it. At least these days, viruses aren't MS Word documents, which
helps... 

No need for firewalls - I continue to maintain a FreeBSD firewall system at
my parents' house, and I trust it a lot more than I'd trust a personal
firewall. I'm weary about personal firewalls, though, because sometimes
their interface causes problems (and a _properly_ locked down box shouldn't
need one): eg, one relative who somehow got Norton's firewall to block
outbound IE. Not easy to fix over the phone... 

Vivien
-- 
Vivien M.
vivienm at dyndns.org
Assistant System Administrator
Dynamic Network Services, Inc.
http://www.dyndns.org/ 