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The BBC's Honeypot PC
Alex Pontin writes, "This article from the BBC shows how vulnerable XP Home really is. Using a highly protected XP Pro machine running VMWare, the BBC hosted an unprotected XP Home system to simulate what an 'average' home PC faces when connected to the internet." From the article: "Seven hours of attacks: 36 warnings that pop-up via Windows Messenger. 11 separate visits by Blaster worm. 3 separate attacks by Slammer worm. 1 attack aimed at Microsoft IIS Server. 2-3 "port scans" seeking weak spots in Windows software." The machine was attacked within seconds of being connected to the Internet, and at no time did more than 15 minutes elapse between attacks.
I set up a friend's new computer and installed a firewall, before attaching to to internet for the first time and he was stunned how fast the log of probes filled up. He'd never used a firewall before on his old XP machine.
What bugs me is why there doesn't seem to be any decent coordinated effort to track the bots down and shut them down and to go after the perpetrators. Really, it doesn't seem that hard, it just seems like no government is interested in doing anything about it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The BBC is not exactly known for being beginners at IT, they're the people that brought a lot of us (including me) into the age of personal computing with their BBC Micro Computer.
The thing they've tried to do here is to accurately simulate what the average home user will do, and see what the consequences would be.
It's like a 17 year old nude virgin visiting the octoberfest and expecting to come away 'unscathed', I give you that much. But anybody that buys one of those HP internet ready pc's with XP pre-installed that goes home and plugs in his / her machine is doing the exact same thing.
The instructions even tell you to connect all that stuff *before* switching on in simple-to-use IKEA style no words diagrams. Don't be too quick to judge the beeb, they're pretty good at what they do.
MP3 Search Engine
it's easy to say "well duh!", but when you have a brand-new out-of-the-box computer, it doesn't exactly come with instructions. My grandmother has no way of knowing she's supposed to be running a firewall, or going to get a Microsoft Security update before doing anything else. WE know these things, because we hang out on Slashdot, but they're not obvious to the rest of the world, and I applaud the BBC for bothering to put this in people's minds. Until the day Microsoft starts shipping Windows with firewalls INSTALLED and ON by default, articles like this will truly be helpful.