Slashdot Mirror
Is Obsolescence Good Computer Security?
caesar-auf-nihil asks: "I was recently considering a switch from dial-up to something faster (either cable or DSL) but my friend recommended against it since he said I was more secure staying with Dial-Up. His argument was that my connection's slowness and 'not always on' connection gave me better security since I was less of a target for many security threats. Now, I have never gotten infected, nor do I believe my machine is infested with spyware and/or controlling programs as it runs fine, but I wonder if the obsolescence argument is really good or not. Does Dial-Up really protect you or is this a false sense of security and I should just go ahead and pick a faster service and make sure my firewall is a good one and my virus definitions are always up to date?"
Why go for slightly better security when you can go all the way?!
Forget dial-up. Hand floppies to your friends with instructions on what web pages you'd like to browse. They will return the floppies to you with the pages. You will be extremely secure from viruses... much better than dial-up. Think of it like Netflix for the web.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Its much more secure if you personally just dialup and squark and squeek at the handset processing all of the information yourself, you can't do this with DSL because its a digitial line so you can't hear what it is saying properly. Personally this form of internet communication, while a little slow (around 2 baud) has never resulted in any security problems.
In summary
Your friend is a muppet, probably Fozzy, potentially Gonzo.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
How exactly are you going ot be mugged if you're naked?
"Give me your wallet!"
"What wallet?"
But you can't stop with just dialup. You have to use MSDOS 2.0, and get yourself a good ansi term program to connect to a dialup that gives you telnet, ftp, nn, lynx, pine, etc. Use a 300 baud modem for maximum attack-throttling also.
No-one's gonna be able to hack into my old Amstrad, ha-ha-ha! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you OpenBSD pretenders!
Not to mention you can't exactly throw a Linksys router (hardware firewall) inbetween you and the wall when you are on dialup.
This is about like having sex without a condom and thinking 'well she is a little slow, so she probably doesn't have any diseases.'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Now THAT is good advice! Best buddy stole my router forcing me to turn my under used linux machine into a router/firewall.... I am twice the tech I was (now i canplay minesweeper AND manipulate text based routing tables)
Well, if you can play minesweeper you are well on your way to a MCSE certification :)
*duck*
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So you're the fucker who turned the net off last night.