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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
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----------------------------------------------------------------------

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.


------------------------------




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