On Tuesday 02 December 2003 13:29, John Dean wrote:
I don't think you can really knock LEAs or ISPs for not wanting to open ports
ISPs don't close ports. The is your responsibility. They do if they are supplying schools - at least at my end of the country, and I would suspect they have to in order to comply with BeCTA guidelines (though I'm not sure).
This is unbelievable. If you have the correct equippment i.e. an ADSL modem/ router with built-in firewall it would not matter if you are running Windows, Linux or both. There is plenty of content filtering software available for all platforms
Network and Computer security is not all about software. It should include written policies and procedures. Indeed, but these policies need to be written by people with the correct levels of expertise. You don't usually find these people in schools or indeed in LEAs. (I don't profess to have that level of competence myself - I just know enough to know that this whole issue is a lot more complex than some
Of course it matters. Apart from the fact that your router/firewall *will* be hacked one day, you could (most likely would!) have windows machines infected by payloads delivered to Outlook or IE via web pages or emails. These machines would then be able to create havoc on the internal network and on the outbound ports which are left open on the firewall (likely pop3, smtp, http at least). On a cheapo hardware firewall, I suspect all outbound ports are likely to be open (they are on my adsl router/firewall and there's nothing I can do about that on the router). people on this list think!)
Hackers arn't interested in breaking into a schools network.
They don't care. What will hack into the school network is a bit of software already running on somebody else's compromised machine. It won't know it's hacking a school, it will just run through a big pile of vulnerabilities until it gets in. Once it's in, it will start attacking from your machines. Cheers -- Phil Driscoll