[muglo] Re: Firewall Protection for Dial-Up System?

on 27/12/02 10:43, Leith Peterson at lpeterso@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Is firewall protection necessary for a dial-up system?  I'm using
> 8.6/9.0.4.  I always update my virus protection every month.  I was
> of the impression that firewall protection was only necessary for
> "always on" systems.  I've got the bottom feeder casual cruise with
> sympatico.  From previous posts I understand there may be more
> security risks if I were to upgrade to OSX.  Pls advise.

I practice very unsafe computing (virus protection, what's that?) and I've
not had a virus in _over_ 10 years (the last virus I was infected with was
in 1989 and that was something like MDEF B).

If you run a WInblows machine with some "free" third party apps they you
_definitely_ want to run some form of virus protection + firewall.

Macs are pretty immune to both viruses and to firewall problems. If you're
running OS 9 you're pretty much 100% immune to web attacks (the worst thing
that can happen is a "denial of service" attack). The fact that you're on
dial-up makes that virtually 100% immune guaranteed.

I once ran into a person claiming that his Mac pre-OS X had been hacked from
outside and a third party had controlled his machine but I was never able to
verify his claims (it sounded like he misunderstood a Java vulnerability in
an older version of Netscape 4.5/6/7.x).

OS X is so new that I've not heard anything about computer viruses (PS viri
or virii are unequivocally _incorrect_ spellings. The only time we use an i
plural ending in English is when the root Latin word was also made plural
through the use of i. Vir = man in Latin, viri = men, thus virii would mean
mens in English). Anyone know if people have been writing viruses for OS X
yet?

OS X comes with a built-in firewall, and Jaguar now has an easy-to-configure
interface in the preferences pane if you're concerned. Since OS X is a
UNIX-like OS (well, it has all the trappings of a UNIX except Apple didn't
pay for the (tm)) with all the web services you may want to consider running
the OS X firewall if you turn on things like ftp server/ssh telnet access
(since OS X is like a UNIX you can control nearly every aspect by logging in
through the ssh server)/Apache/etc.

So, the short of it is: if you're running pre-OS X on a dial-up a firewall
is a waste of $$$, CPU cycles and stability.

If you're on an always-on connection, a firewall *can* be a useful thing
(provided you know what to do with it) in that it can prevent such things as
"port sniffers" from sniffing out your computer or denial of service attacks
being launched against your computer.

l8r, eric.



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