… And my wife and I ended up staying at a small Inn about 250km’s north of Toronto. One of the things that they advertised was high speed Internet (as I needed access if I got an emergency call from someone). When we got to Inn, there was no Ethernet jack. I flipped open my Macbook Pro and didn’t see a wireless connection (except for the one form the Inn across the street which was locked down). So my wife went to the office and came back with one of these powerline networking kits. I plugged it in and it worked right away.
This is where the fun begins.
I noticed from the IP address that I was assigned that the Macbook Pro was on the Internet with no firewall between the Macbook Pro and the Internet. Fortunatley OS X has a built in firewall that protects the computer from external attacks, so that was a non issue for me. Also, I noted that there was another PC that was visible to me. It turned out to be the office PC that I was seeing. To top it off, the guest account was enabled and I was able to fully browse the file system of the computer as well as copy and place stuff on to the computer if I were so inclined (which I was not).
Clearly, security was not the Inn’s primary concern.
The take home message is as follows:
- Always have a firewall on your computer (or use a router that has one) if it is connected to the Internet and turned on. This way you are more or less protected from the outside world.
- Never assume that people can’t see the stuff on your computer. Assume that the can and take steps to prevent it which includes disabling the “Guest” accounts on your computer.
The latter is important. Here’s how you do that under Windows XP:
- Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
- Click Local Users and Groups.
- Click Users.
- Right-click the Guest account, choose Properties.
- On the General tab, select Account is Disabled.
- Click Ok.
Note: This only works on a computer with Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional computer that is NOT on a domain.
On Mac OS X 10.5, here’s how you do it:
- Go to System Preferences
- Click on the Accounts icon
- Highlight the “Guest Account” and ensure that “Allow Guests To Log Into This Computer” is unchecked.
Safari “Carpet Bombing” Flaw Is Potentially Serious Says ZDNet And Stopthebadware.org
Posted in Commentary, Security with tags Apple, Safari, Security on May 30, 2008 by itnerdYou’ll recall that in a previous posting I wrote about three flaws in the Apple Safari web browser. I took Apple to task for not fixing all three flaws, which earned me the wrath of the Apple fanboi community (just look at the comments in that posting). Well it seems that others feel the same way that I do. Stopthebadware.org and zdnet have postings that contend that these issues should be fixed now. In the case of Stopthebadware.org, Laureli Mallek contends:
“Assuming Nitesh’s analysis is accurate, “unwanted downloads,” as Apple calls them, represent a serious security threat to users, who can be easily tricked into executing a malicious file. StopBadware.org believes that users should have control over software being downloaded to their computers, and we encourage Apple to reconsider its stance and treat this as the security issue that it is.”
And in the case of ZDNet, Ryan Naraine says:
“Think about it: A combo-attack where Dhanjani’s Safari vulnerability is used to drop a nasty executable on your desktop and another (known or unknown) vulnerability used to run it. Instant drive-by malware installation!”
Apple wants to play the security card by claiming that they are more secure than Windows. If they want to do that, they have to address issues like this when they appear as opposed to brushing them off as non-issues. I think part of the problem is that the Apple crowd have this impression that they are immune to the attacks that plague Windows users. The fact is that as the number of Apple users grows, the number of attacks that target the Apple platform will grow as well.
So Apple, do the right thing and fix these issues now.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to use Firefox.
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