[tlug] freeze-dried fish sticks vs. fishing poles

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Hey guys, it's nice to see y'all discussing security at such length,
but a little more rationale would be welcome.

Lyle hasn't said what he's going to do with his box, but based on past
discussion I would guess it's going to be a workstation, not a server.
It's going to live in his apartment, not in an office.  It has
bootable floppy and probably CD-ROM drives.

So as long as he doesn't install telnetd, sshd, and ftpd, it doesn't
matter what his root password is (as long as it's not easily mistaken
for his normal user's password, and isn't null).  If someone gets
physical access to his machine and happens to have a Tom's floppy
handy, well, he's Christmas turkey anyway.  If they have to come in
over the net, and there are no daemons, well, too bad for the black
hats.

On the other hand, the fact that he didn't install those daemons
doesn't mean Kubuntu didn't do it for him.  Gotta check ... look in
/etc/services.

That kind of thing, ne?

-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.