Ulrich Drepper (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} udrepper) wrote,@ 2007-02-12 21:09:00 |
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| Entry tags: | security |
But I Have Nothing Of Interest On My Machine
I'm sick and tired of hearing people saying
I don't have to secure my machine since I have nothing of interest on it. Nobody would want to steal anything I have.
That's absolutely not the point. Yes, some attackers are after personal data like account numbers. But this is not all:
- passwords are high on the list since people use the same password for all their accounts, be it banks, Amazon, eBay, whatever. Do you still agree you don't have anything interesting protected by those passwords?
- if a machine can be taken over it can be used to a) sniff the local network, b) attack other machines, c) send spam. Some ISPs already stopped being lenient towards idiots who allow this to happen unchecked and they simply suspend the accounts. Do you care about having an Internet connection?
Security always matters even if the data stored on the machine is benign. Nobody should be allowed to even run machines which have no distinction between user and administrator. This includes more and more Linux people because new idiot distributions like Linspire, NimbleX, etc pop up. No machine should be without firewalls, in both directions. For RHEL/Fedora users it of course doesn't stop there, we have many more security features and if it would be up to me I would take out the switch to disable them.
Next time when you see somebody writing nonsense like the above (or hear them talking like this) do me a favor: smack them a bit so that they come to their senses. These are the people who create the opportunity for spam, phishing, and other illicit activities. Heck, they deserve more then a bit of smacking...
