> I remember a few years ago, when Keith ran a fancy new firewall
> that monitored all his ports. He said he was getting an average
> of two or three attacks every day! And some of them were
> persistent.

RG> Yeah, that really must've been a few years ago. These days it
RG> isn't unusal to expect thousands of 'attacks' per day - at
RG> least that is what is being dropped by our firewall every day.
RG> consistantly.

 Jesus! Where do they originate? And how do so many get your address
anyway?

RG> It isn't hard to set up a maintainance free firewall. It isn't
RG> as though you need to update them whenever a new exploit is
RG> found, because the firewall should be dropping any incoming
RG> accesses that aren't specifically allowed anyway.

 My worry is that someone will penetrate. David tells me he runs a
hardware firewall.

> I have learned, that no matter how smart you are (or think you
> are) there is always someone a dollar ahead and a day early.

RG> I have learned that you are totally paranoid and really don't
RG> have much of a clue as to how the Internet and/or firewalls
RG> work.

 I defer to your high opinion of your own ability. Does anyone else
on the planet confirm it, btw? Do you have certificates, medals, even
a photgraph of Bill Gates?

RG> You'll find most sysadmins (including the big boys like
RG> Telstra, optus, etc) DON'T run Microshaft products for their
RG> core networking. Only home uses are foolish enough to do that.

 ROFL!! I'm not planning on going into competition with Telstra. In
fact, I'd like to know why Telstra and the rest can't do what the BBS
sysops used to do, and filter the unwanted shit. How hard could it be
to dump whoever launched the last spam attack?

> I plan to set up two machines: the Linux gateway that runs 24/7
> but with *no* product on it.

RG> That's what we've been trying to tell you to do for months!.

 No... what you have been tryign to tell me for months is that
cookies and the registry offer no penetration problems.

RG> If you're at all interested, we settled on using a Linux distro
RG> called 'Coyote' for our firewall needs. It boots from floppy,
RG> runs from RAM. No HD needed, and it is using a very old 486
RG> machine with only 8mB ram.

 I know about that idea... allowing for the fact that I know nothing
about Linux and firewalls, have a very low intelligence, a shaky grip
on electronics, and my university degree is very old (like me). Gee, I
wish I knew all the good stuff like you, Rod. Could you send me your
photograph of Linus Torvalds? A penguin will do.

> If I must run an executable, then I'll do it on the Linux
> machine.

RG> How do you propose to run Windoze executables on a Linux
RG> machine?

 The way I do now... but then, I don't know much, about anything,
really.

RG> How many Linux executables do you know of that are actually
RG> viruses?

 Can I call a friend?

> I'll just reload the entire machine. This Linux installs in ten
> minutes.

RG> And a Linux firewall booted from a write protected floppy will
RG> reboot to a clean system in a fraction of that time.

 I'm not so old that I can't waste ten minutes, or wait an extra ten
minutes for important mail like this.

Regards,
Bob
    

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