One should be careful what one offers. I believe this latest worm does just that, this Saturday. All at once.
Of course, I could be full of shite, too, since my source is a radio ‘personality’ with the tech savvy of your average AOLer.
My point was to see how many Windows services access the net without your knowledge and where they go. If you don’t use Internet Explorer,Windows Explorer starts accessing. Why?
Read_Neck, guess I still don’t get how that’s related to either:
a) what I said
b) the topic of unix vs. windows re: security, or most importantly
c) the OP relating to security and worms in general.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t know of even one worm that takes advantage of your browser sending out undesired traffic. And I’m somewhat knowledgeable about things worm-like. Could you elaborate on the security threat you’re concerned about, and how it relates to any of the topics here?
My point regarding Unix isn’t that it’s a perfect operating system, because it isn’t.
It just seems to me through years of experience with both Unix and Windows that it is far, far easier to implement custom security on a *nix box than it is on a Windows box.
And I have seen *nix boxes where the only user with write access was root, specifically because they had to be secure. If the name of the game is security, I’d still rather lock down a *nix box than a Windows box.
I firmly believe *nix is great for servers, but it’s not something I’d want to give all of my users. For as many ways as there are to easily improve upon an OS like *nix and to shape the security as the admin sees fit, there are ways for lusers to fuck it up.
Given my choice, I’d rather fix the fuckup of a luser on a Windows box than a *nix box.
I’m lucky I’m still running WindowsME, but my sister, who just got a laptop, is running XP, which means she may get hit. (And for some reason her burner stopped working).
She’s also have a hell of a time downloading the patch-it keeps stopping on her. sigh
My uncle claims we’re going to get hit Saturday and Sunday with the second wave.