[vox-tech] Spyware For Linux?

[Jonathan Stickel]

Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Tue 15 Mar 05, 11:13 AM, Bill Kendrick <nbs at sonic.net> said:
> 
>>On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 10:46:15AM -0800, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It bothers me that Fedora turns sshd on by default.
>>>A naive user could set a silly root password, and 
>>>they'll be cracked in a few hours.
>>
>>Does it allow root to SSH in by default?  (I've seen setups which specifically
>>do /not/.)
> 
>  
> Jonathan, I think this is overcautious.
> 
> There is no concept of absolute security.  Security all about compromise:
> What inconveniences are you willing to suffer through in the name of keeping
> your system secure?  That's the question we all ask, implicitly or
> explicitly.
> 
> Installing a daemon to allow remote login to your computer, I feel, falls
> well on the side of acceptable for most uses of a computer.
> 
> If you're installing a system that needs to be SO secure that an ssh daemon
> is undesirable, your kung-fu is probably good enough that you're well aware
> sshd got installed and you know how to disable it.
> 
> At that level, either your kung-fu is good enough of you hire a professional
> staff to take care of your IT.
> 

Oh, I agree with you.  Most of us want to have ssh ability.  I'm 
thinking of all the newbies I help install linux for who have no idea 
that a remote login is even possible.  Then they complain about having 
to use root all the time, and they change the root password to something 
silly, like "root".  Then they get hacked through ssh and exclaim "I 
thought you said Linux was secure!"

I think that if you want ssh, you will know what it is and will know to 
enable it.  It just occurred to me, though, that Fedora's firewall 
automatically blocks the ssh daemon.  So Fedora is secure by default 
after all.

Jonathan