North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

RE: Microsoft to ship new versions with firewall enabled

  • From: Daniel Senie
  • Date: Thu Aug 14 13:03:30 2003 
At 12:39 PM 8/14/2003, Matthew Watkins wrote:


Apple have the right idea... I'd say all the vendors need to take a
carefully balanced approach to security in the default configurations of
their software. Leave services exposed to the network disabled by default,
where possible.

By all means, configure firewalls by default to block all non-established
incoming connections to low port numbers, but for heaven's sake don't also
block access to those ports from the local subnet as well.
Define "local subnet."

Go sit in a Starbucks and use Wifi. Is the person at the next table, or sitting on the bench outside with their laptop considered on the "local subnet?" Do you trust that person?

This is just an example of how a policy like the one you suggest can be dangerous.