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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 27 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Microsoft Windows Does Not Disable AutoRun Properly Re: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages Re: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages Re: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages ====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:56:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Microsoft Windows Does Not Disable AutoRun Properly Message-ID: <p0624083ac5a46bc4af51@[10.0.1.6]> National Cyber Alert System Technical Cyber Security Alert TA09-020A Microsoft Windows Does Not Disable AutoRun Properly Original release date: January 20, 2009 Last revised: January 21, 2009 Source: US-CERT Systems Affected * Microsoft Windows Overview Disabling AutoRun on Microsoft Windows systems can help prevent the spread of malicious code. However, Microsoft's guidelines for disabling AutoRun are not fully effective, which could be considered a vulnerability. ... http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA09-020A.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:57:30 -0500 From: "MC" <for.address.look@www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages Message-ID: <FaFfl.1539$pq.53@bignews1.bellsouth.net> <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message news:7238af15-c8ed-427f-929c- > rest of us suffer for it. The Internet was allowed to grow without > proper controls (controls that normal computer systems always have) > because the early people believed in a utopian world. That utopia > might have worked in a closed collegiate world (and actually it didn't > work that well), but it was an utter failure in the wide open real > world. Tell me about it! In the 1990s I had the job of leading the team that drafted and then promulgated the University of Georgia's computer security policy. A *large* subset of the population assumed at the outset that the Internet was a fantasy world or game in which people ought not to have any real responsibilities. When we hammered home the point that illegal activity (e.g., making threats of violence) does not become legal just because it's on the Internet, they tried to portray me as an oppressor. (The point of law is what I call the Stealing Elephants Principle: In the U.S. criminal code there is, as far as I know, no specific mention of stealing elephants, but that does not mean it's legal to steal an elephant. In the same way, the law does not have to specifically mention computers in order for an illegal act that happens to involve a computer to be illegal.) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:35:38 +0000 (UTC) From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages Message-ID: <glnk5q$1hgb$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu> In article <7238af15-c8ed-427f-929c-33c8207f8519@r22g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>, <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote: >The Internet was allowed to grow without proper controls [...] >because the early people believed in a utopian world. The "early people" knew very well that they had completely ignored security: they did so intentionally, knowing that the network would only ever be accessible to a few thousand DoD-approved contractors and grantees. (Many of the "early people" had spent their prior careers working on operating systems with significant security design requirements, like Multics.) There was a fundamental principle that hosts were responsible for their own security, which made[1] a great deal of sense in a world where computers required large rooms and skilled full-time staff to maintain (as opposed to today, where a resource inversion has given the "bad guys" access to vastly more computational power and network resources than the "good guys"). Nobody expected that their "walled garden" would be turned inside out. -GAWollman [1] Actually, it still makes a great deal of sense, and it's how I run my network; what's changed is that it can no longer be the sole means of defense. -- Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:37:08 -0500 From: "MC" <for.address.look@www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages Message-ID: <yqPfl.1757$pq.601@bignews1.bellsouth.net> "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> wrote in message news:glnk5q$1hgb$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu... > In article <7238af15-c8ed-427f-929c-33c8207f8519@r22g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>, > <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote: >>The Internet was allowed to grow without proper controls [...] >>because the early people believed in a utopian world. > The "early people" knew very well that they had completely ignored > security: they did so intentionally, knowing that the network would > only ever be accessible to a few thousand DoD-approved contractors and > grantees. Right; the early Internet was designed for use by people who were held accountable to their community by other means, and in fact mostly knew each other or at least respected each other as valuable colleagues. But there was a second wave of not-quite-so-early people who really did believe they were creating an alternative utopian society by networking their computers. It was very fuzzy thinking, but it was common. There was also a perpetual-adolescence mindset: commercialism is evil, business is evil, somebody should pay for lots of big computers for us. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: mailto:telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (4 messages) ******************************