[11837] in bugtraq
Disabling everything
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman)
Sat Sep 11 01:15:38 1999
Message-Id:  <m11P3A9-000369C@jmh>
Date:         Thu, 9 Sep 1999 08:18:00 EDT
Reply-To: "Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel@EXC.COM>
From: "Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel@EXC.COM>
X-To:         BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM
To: BUGTRAQ@SECURITYFOCUS.COM
In-Reply-To:  Ryan Russell's message of Sat, 4 Sep 1999 10:42:53 -0700 
              <882567E2.0061513C.00@gwwest.sybase.com>
>It's always a good idea to disable pings from the outside to your internal
>network.  [...]
Truth is, I'm getting a bit worried about the general approach to
security, which is becoming "disable everything from the outside."  I
think we should focus on making these remote protocols safe, rather
than disabling them.
Ping is very useful.  So is finger.  So too are lots of other remote
functions that are increasingly blocked.
Is there really no way to make these secure?  Or are we just taking
the easy way out?
-Joel Hoffman