[SATLUG] ATT Thanks you

[Thomas King]

> Good advice.. I have an ancient load of Linux on line and it's never been
> hacked since it went up in 2000 (and I see attack strings all the time in the
> logs).  I manually keep things patched, have a simple iptables firewall in
> place, conform to a good security policies, enforce strong passwords and keep
> my exposed network profile to a minimum -- and I just don't sweat the ssh
> strong arm or buffer over flows attacks.  It's all a part of being on the
> net. <knock on laptop>

I know how it feels, though, to want to have an ISP take action on what they
actually can control, yet they don't lift a finger. What's the saying..."If you
are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."

> Honestly.. hardly anyone on this list is important enough to be "targeted by a
> real hacker"...  and if you are (or they do), then you hopefully already know
> this and have hopefully already take adequate precautions. ;)

It's that dream that someday something magical is going to happen and drop all
the spam and hacking. Yeah, yeah, I hear you laughing. :|

During our last tech meeting on campus, they gave us a sheet showing the amount
of spam that actually gets blocked from coming in - 95% of all inbound email was
blocked at the network border as spam. They actually graphed this info over the
past year - I don't remember the exact numbers but it was way over a million per
month and increasing astronomically. For large enterprises, this means coming to
a point of either drinking from a firehose or buying more expensive equipment.
For us with servers at home or working in small businesses, we don't have to
worry as much but cannot sit with heads in sand.

/off soap box :)

Tom King