From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Nov 5 4:29:32 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from atkielski.com (atkielski.com [161.58.232.69]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A6B1637B416 for ; Mon, 5 Nov 2001 04:29:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from contactdish (ASt-Lambert-101-2-1-14.abo.wanadoo.fr [193.251.59.14]) by atkielski.com (8.11.6) id fA5CStX22166; Mon, 5 Nov 2001 13:28:55 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <00cc01c165f5$824a8800$0a00000a@atkielski.com> From: "Anthony Atkielski" To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" , References: <007001c165e9$f3a5cfc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> Subject: Re: Lockdown of FreeBSD machine directly on Net Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 13:28:48 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Ted writes: > ... your making a mistake if you assume that > crackers all operate off a cost-benefit basis. The ones with the resources to crack seriously secure systems don't have much choice but to consider cost vs. benefit, as such resources are quite expensive, and even the richest organization cannot afford to allocate them with no regard to potential benefits. There may be kiddie crackers out there willing to dedicate all their time and energy to breaking into an arbitrary system, but they don't have the hardware necessary to, say, factor an RSA modulus, so they'll never get very far. > Sometimes people decide to be assholes and > attempt to gun you just because they are > assholes, and they don't care how long it > takes or how much trouble it takes to do it, > or what happens to themselves while doing it. For the same reason (namely, an antisocial behavioral pattern), they usually never have access to the tools needed to break into really secure systems. You could compare it to many other domains, such as drag racing or something. While some hotheaded young males may be willing to devote their lives to building the ultimate dragster, their tempers and instability and generally dysfunctional personalities prevent them from ever earning or gaining access to the resources required to actually build the ultimate dragster. Instead they spend their lives tinkering with whatever pieces of junk they can collect for nothing or for whatever meager funds they manage to acquire. Such people are more of a nuisance than a serious threat. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message