Re: Dlink.com.sg intrusion with worm??

On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.security.misc, in article
<egi4g8$gl8$1@xxxxxxx>, mak wrote:

I am all with you,
but until people learn how to use their pc, I suggest to give them advice
they can easily follow.

Excuse me - IBM introduced the PC to the world August 12, 1981. If you are
a Mac phreak, the Apple I was introduced in 1976 (the Apple ][ came out a
year later). Exactly how long do you think it's going to take for people
to "learn how to use" their PC? The skill level has actually gone down
several orders of magnitude since 1982, because software developers have
made their software "easier" to use. This "ease of use" also makes the
software "easier to abuse" as more dangerous features are enabled by
default on the remote chance that _someone_ might find a feature useful.

I mentioned the 'netstat /ano' command for XP. Do you even know how to
run that command - never mind know what it's telling you?

Not everybody is interested in hardening their system and learning about
exploits or tcp/ip.

Then they shouldn't be using a network enabled PC. Contrary to the dreams
of microsoft, every one in the entire world does not need a server - web,
mail, file, or anything else.

what's the other option?

What's the alternative when a driver insists on driving while intoxicated?

they get taken over, they spam and spread viruses and are used for illegal
filesharing - probably w/out them even knowing.

Personally, I realize that judicial punishment would be useless - you'd
run out of jail space in a heartbeat. I'd prefer that computers taken
over by mal-ware be confiscated and destroyed at the previous owners
expense. After some idiots lost their systems for the fifth time at
US$500-2000 a pop, they _might_ decide to learn, or to no longer use a
computer. Either decision would make me happy.

and the experts can point fingers and say: why don't you use
linux/unix/whatever and why didn't you protect your system ?

Trust me on this - using *nix as stupidly as using windoze has similar
results. The reason UNIX or Linux (or *BSD) has less exploits is that
it is harder to use - every service is NOT automatically enabled. You
have enable things individually, and it's not as simple as clicking on
a single icon. You to think - what a strange concept.

and - no offense to Luther- when someone states

[...]

,I think they are not very familiar with anything related to comp security.

Notice how users would rather buy a program/application to disable some
windoze "feature" rather than spend a few minutes to find out how you can
disable it _in_ windoze for free. It says a lot about the quality of the
software from microsoft when there is this huge and profitably after-market
in anti-malware. Microsoft doesn't care - the fools continue to buy (soon
they will only rent) the bad software, so why should they change.

Old guy
.

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