RE: [Full-Disclosure] Microsoft urging users to buy Harware Firewalls

["Richard M. Smith" <rms@computerbytesman.com>]

Firewalls have been well established as a good method of preventing
access to local area network resources from the Internet.  A corporation
who didn't use a firewall to protect their LAN would consider to be
pretty irresponsible.  For $40, why shouldn't a home user get this same
kind of basic protection?

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-admin@lists.netsys.com
[mailto:full-disclosure-admin@lists.netsys.com] On Behalf Of Nik Reiman
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 8:30 PM
To: Richard M. Smith
Cc: full-disclosure@lists.netsys.com
Subject: Re: [Full-Disclosure] Microsoft urging users to buy Harware
Firewalls


Richard M. Smith quoth:
> I agree with Microsoft's recommendation for a hardware firewall on all
> home PCs.  A Linksys NAT router box is selling for only $40 at Amazon
as
> we speak.  Besides protecting against the MSBlaster worm, a hardware

In my experience, throwing money at problems like this is a temporary
fix, at best.  It's a pretty sad state of affairs when a software
vendor recommends specialized hardware to compensate for their lack of
security.

> firewall blocks those annoying Windows pop-up spam messages which have
> become so common lately.  A hardware firewall also protects a shared
> Windows directory from being accessed from the Internet.  My only
> question is why aren't NAT routers built into all cable and DSL
modems.

Because (a) it's probably cheaper not to, and (b) not all ISP's allow
NAT in their terms of service.

-Nik

-- 
Nik Reiman // nik@aboleo.net \\ http://www.aboleo.net
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