Re: [A/S] A WiFi question

[Rick Kunath <k9ao@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Turn off file and printer sharing.

Turn off file and printer sharing.

Turn off file and printer sharing.

Yeah, it's that important.

Then uninstall the NETbeui protocol entirely. Microsoft uses it to 
broadcast file and printer shares across a network. It isn't routable, 
but will pass through a wireless, Ethernet, or dial-up connection. 
Remove it. You don't need it.

Kudos for the firewall.

Just remember that for Windows the effectiveness of your software 
firewall depends on the insecure Microsoft TCP/IP stack internal to the 
operating system. It isn't perfect, but it is fairly effective.

Real firewalls run on separate pieces of hardware and fully inspect each 
packet before allowing it to pass into the secured safe side of the 
firewall. They're really good (and dirt cheap). A small consumer router 
(or other cable Internet or DSL Internet sharing device) is *not* 
(though manufacturers call them that) a real firewall, it is a NAT 
device (network address translation). It won't statefully inspect 
packets, can't automatically respond to intrusion attempts, can't reject 
tampered with packets, and can't handle the routing of complex 
applications effectively. (The firewall acts as a router too.)

In the software firewall case, the crook is already inside the house, if 
he can discover a Windows security flaw, he is in and around the 
firewall. The key phrase here being "Windows security flaw". Yeah, there 
are a lot of them. Still. Post SP2. Windows is still just plain 
insecure. (I try to use it as little as possible.)

If anyone is interested in more on this or cheap firewalls that are 
secure, grab me off list (it's probably off-topic, but Hunter can weigh 
in here).

They are cheap and easy to set up, and dead easy to maintain. Even on 
dial-up you'll get hit by intrusion attempts. In one dial-up session a 
year ago I logged over a thousand attempts to break into my system. I 
was using a hardware firewall on dial-up (yep,they can be used on 
dial-up or any other access method) at the time, and laughed off the 
attempts. But people can and do get nailed no matter what kind of 
connection they use to access the Internet.

I am glad the person who discovered your printer share was nice enough 
to do the usual white-hat thing and give you a warning with a test page.

Rick Kunath
WBCCI #3060