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US House Passes P2P Ban On Federal Networks
An anonymous reader writes "Recently, the US House of Representatives passed a bill in an attempt to ban peer-to-peer file-sharing applications on federal computers and networks. Similar bills have been proposed before, apparently in response to confidential government documents being found on LimeWire. The text of the bill, however, provides a very broad definition of 'peer-to-peer file sharing software,' and may extend to more than they intend (SMB? LDAP?)."
I think this will greatly hinder our offensive capabilities in a cyberwar
Clearly there are only two options:
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I believe there should be a list of what is allowed and everything else is disallowed.
That's pretty much the way it is. They actually have a pretty secure MS ecosystem. Between DISA, NIST and USAF and Microsoft, they've come up with the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) (which is an outgrowth of the USAF 'Standard Desktop Computer' (SDC)).
Various security settings, GPO's, etc. If you use a standard FDCC image, it is pretty well locked down, AND can be administered from anywhere. Having said that...'locked down' as much as XP or Vista can be. But the VAST majority of users do not need much more than Office and the base OS. No real need for 8 zillion extra little tools, which may or may not have their own vuln's.
But there is quite a lot on the approved list. Installed on a case by case eval. Wireshark or Firefox, for example. It is up to each department to further refine that list. For instance, the USAF (mostly) bans Firefox in favor of IE7.
Why the hell are they running MS OSes anyway?
Changing the US fed govt infrastructure from MS to 'something else', Linux for example, will take an extremely long time, and may well end up worse than it is now. Take the Munich example and multiply the problems by 500. For better or worse, an org of that size can't just switch.
I went to your link, then went to the FAQ, which sent me back to the patch notes, with a link available for the FAQs, which took me back to the patch notes. If that is the best the federal government can do, I am brushing up on my chinese, russian and arabic, because we are all fucked.