Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Disagreements with Bruce's Home PC Advice

Interesting discussion over on Bruce Schneier's Page on sensible things to do to secure your home PC. Amusingly this guy appears to disagree with most of Bruce's points. Not sure why as they seem eminently sensible. Gordon Luk seems to be confusing security with system maintenance, and advises not securing unless you know what you are doing.


The problem with this is that not securing your PC doesn't just affect you, but the rest of the Internet. If you don't have the savvy to secure - speak to someone who does! It is getting closer and closer to the time when you WILL become legally responsible for what attacks your PC hosts, so secure it now. There really is no excuse!

Quick summary of my thoughts on Gordon's posts -

1) If you don't know how - get someone to help, don't just ignore the issue
2) Any useful support bod can use their own versions on CD
3) 5 seconds in any microwave is good for CD wiping, and good shredders cope fine
4) Absolutely - us techies live for free lunch
5) Switching to Firefox is staggeringly easy now - it "just works"
6) Users "should" use long random passwords for anything valuable. Or else...
7) Don't rely on the "lock" icon. Relatively easily spoofed - cross site scripting!
8) Agreed - free beer helps after free lunch!
9) ROFL!
10) and 11) agreed