Re: [Cs-club] Why IRC is blocked on campus

["Brian Haynes" <deus777@earthling.net>]

---<snip>---
> >No doubt it would be possible to compromise machines from inside the 
> >network.  You mentioned in your previous email that the exploit on the 
> >Netbios port allowed for a command-line.  What prevents someone from 
> >inside the network from using this exploit to do something on other 
> >people's machines besides IRC?
> >      -Brian
> 
> NOTHING!  Be a good user, run a firewall.  The Internet is a scary 
> place.  As a side note, XP seems to have some sort of firewalling built 
> in.  I wonder if anyone has played with it?  I use a hardware firewall, so 
> I haven't bothered.
---<snip>---
In your first email, you said: "We were having a problem with computers all over campus, MIO servers,
GIS lab computers, a few over in clow teaching, even our own laptop in the networking department."  Why weren't these computers running firewalling software?  The MIO servers and the networking department's laptop, at least, should've been.
I haven't played around with the firewalling in XP, since I removed it in favor of 2000 after playing with it for an hour or so.  According to Microsoft's site, having the XP firewall turned on prevents file and printer sharing, so if you need to do that on the machine connected directly to the network, you're screwed.  I've heard that the XP firewall is decent, but not great.  I recommend ZoneAlarm as a software firewall to anyone who wants one.  It's free, and even the free version regularly scores as high on tests as non-free firewalls such as Norton's.  No ads on it either.   www.zonelabs.com
     -Brian
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