Re: Real-world security stats

["Patrick Stockton" <codejnki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charter communications activly port scans you to make sure you are not
running any HTTP or FTP servers.  I have it at home myself too.

If you read all the wonderful access agreements they hand you when they drop
of the modem, you'll see that you've agreed to let them do this to you.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dirk H Bartley" <dbartley@schupan.com>
To: <members@kalamazoolinux.org>
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: Real-world security stats


> Bruce Smith wrote:
> >
> > > Bruce Schneier is one of the net's leading security experts. His
> > > Crypto-gram for this month includes some interesting statistics on
> > > internet security.  Each individual sentence in the paragraph below
> > > should fill your heart with cold terror :)
> > >
> > > > A random computer on the Internet is scanned dozens of
> > > > times a day.  The life expectancy of a default installation
> > > > of a Red Hat 6.2 server, or the time before someone
> > > > successfully hacks it, is less than 72 hours.
> >
> > I hope he's talking about a stock install (without updates)!  :-)
> >
> > > > A common
> > > > home user setup, with Windows 98 and file sharing enabled,
> > > > was hacked five times in four days. Systems are subjected
> > > > to NetBIOS scans an average of 17 times a day.  And the
> > > > fastest time for a server being hacked: 15 minutes after
> > > > plugging it into the network.
> > >
> > > http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html
> >
> > My firewall logs at work confirm he's correct about the
> > constant scanning.  Thanks for the link!
> >
>
> My firewall logs at home would concur with the above mentioned frequency.
> Especially since I changed from net-link dial up to charter cable modem
the
> frequency doubled.  I guess a computer with a cable modem is a sweeter
target
> with the higher bandwidth.
>
> Dirk
>