[PLUG] Fwd: Unprotected PCs Fall To Hacker Bots In Just Four Minutes

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

Another good reason to be paranoid about putting any "unprotected" 
machine on the Net -- no matter what the OS.

If you read the entire article, the Linux (Linspire) was apparently the 
most secure, but OS X was never cracked, because the attacks were all 
"Windows based."

[Their methodology, as described in the article does leave a lot to be 
desired.]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Educational CyberPlayGround <admin@edu-cyberpg.com>
> Date: 02 December, 2004 11:56:34 EST
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> SECURITY
> http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Technology/SECURITY.html
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>
> http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/54201306
>
> By Gregg Keizer
> TechWeb.com
> November 30, 2004
>
> The lifespan of a poorly protected PC connected to the Internet is a
> mere four minutes, research released Tuesday claimed. After that, it's
> owned by a hacker.
>
> In the two-week test, marketing-communications firm AvanteGarde
> deployed half a dozen systems in "honeypot" style, using default
> security settings. It then analyzed the machines' performance by
> tallying the attacks, counting the number of compromises, and timing
> how long it took an attack to successfully hijack a computer once it
> was connected to the Internet.
>
> The six machines were equipped with Microsoft Windows Small Business
> Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), Microsoft
> Windows XP SP1 with the free ZoneAlarm personal firewall, Microsoft
> Windows XP SP2, Macintosh OS X 10.3.5, and Linspire's distribution of
> Linux.
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com
whmagill@gmail.com

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