[ILUG] Bloody script kiddies

[Smith, Graham - Computing Technician]

I admin mostly windows boxes - i assume most organisations
have a combination of operating systems. In most organisations
any linux boxes are normally used only for server operations
rather than workstation duties. Its the same in 

For all linux's good points - a lot of people (users) still 
insist on having windows. In here as in most colleges they
tend to teach students through windows based applications.
If somebody wants to run a module in a course of MS Office
applications they dont care how good OpenOffice or AbiWord
are. 

Some less informed people are just so blinded. Here are some
of the phrases i've heard before from managers etc in various
organisations and companies i've dealt with:

"but we need windows because its easy for users", 
"we have to use MS Access because its an industry standard", 
"well NT4 works well, if it aint broke dont fix it" 
"we'd have to retrain all our users to use that system"
"but linux isnt well supported" (companies like to have people they
can blame/sue if stuff screws up)

Personally I dont believe Linux is ready for the desktop for
a lot of people yet. In fact some people believe linux should be kept
secret and away from the reaches of "normal" non-nerds lest
if become too fluffy and windowsy. To some extent i can see that
happening - the popularity of KDE/Gnome over less Windows looking
desktops like WindowMaker (my personal favourite), Afterstep and
Enlightenment

Its an interesting topic... all the support for windows stuff isnt free
and isnt shared like the ilug community. Unless you count some stuff like
Microsoft Knowledge Base for example....

G.

___________________________
 Graham Smith,
 Network Administrator,
 Department of Computing,
 Institute of Technology,
 Tallaght, Dublin 24
 Phone: + 353 (01) 4042840

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin MacCarthy [mailto:macarthy at iol.ie]
Sent: 16 November 2001 14:43
To: ilug at linux.ie
Subject: RE: [ILUG] Bloody script kiddies


For anyone of you that has the good forture or admining NT boxes , look at
"securing windows NT/2000 server " by Oreilly really good guide of the
lovely task of securing NT /WIN2000 boxes

To be Recommended

BTW I have 7 NT boxes hosted co-lo'ed in the USA for huge amount of money
per month. The default installations of NT / 2000 , we got in the beginning
were the least hardened boxes I've ever seen. Dreadful.I mean ever if the
cmd.exe was ACLed !!!!.I think that NT admins are just lazy in comparision
to their *nix counterparts. That plus it much harder to remotely admin NT
boxes , but this has improved with termial services....

Are there many of you on the ILUG admin both wondoze and linux ? Is there a
Ireland windoze user group or mailing list???

Justin

-----Original Message-----
From: ilug-admin at linux.ie [mailto:ilug-admin at linux.ie]On Behalf Of Niall
O Broin
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2001 2:23 PM
To: ilug at linux.ie
Subject: [ILUG] Bloody script kiddies


Just had a look in the log file to which accesses to one of my web server
box's IP address goes i.e. requests not to one of the hosted domains. Since
Sept. there have been 23000+ attempts to get cmd.exe to do something and
4000+ attempts to find root.exe, and this is just on one lonely little box.
I wonder do script kiddies' attempts now use up more bandwidth than porn ?

And do some poor suckers actually have IIS boxes configured in such a way
that you can execute arbitray commands just by calling cmd.exe ?



Niall

--
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-- 
Irish Linux Users' Group: ilug at linux.ie
http://www.linux.ie/mailman/listinfo/ilug for (un)subscription information.
List maintainer: listmaster at linux.ie