FBI Lists Top Computer Risks

[grnidone]

General vulnerabilities

1. Default installs of operating systems and applications
2. Accounts with no passwords or weak passwords
3. Non-existent or incomplete backups
4. Large number of open ports
5. Not filtering packets for correct incoming and outgoing addresses
6. Non-existent or incomplete logging

I find it amazing how many people use the default install of an operating system. Sometimes people don't even change the default password. What a joke.

I don't understand number 5 though. Can someone give me an example?

Full Story here [abcnews.go.com]

[littleman]

Somehow they forgot to mention MS's swiss-cheese server.

[evinrude]

Somehow they forgot to mention MS's swiss-cheese server

*grin* I think that would encompass 1, 2, 4 & 6. :)

[caine]

grnidone,

i think 5. means a firewall, that sniffs data packets, both in and out.

Interesting though.

[bird]

5 is meant to kill certain DOS attacks with forged IPs at the routing level. Not something for the average user, but highly recommended for ISPs and corporate network admins. In a way, this is indeed a firewall technique, but can be applied in many more places than just a few dedicated firewall machines. It's a possibility for your ISP to take a lot of load off your firewall AND their own backbone in case of an attack. And ultimately, it's the only remedy against the raw sockets in WinXP (besides fixing XP, of course... ;)).