My wife & I recently moved into a new apartment complex. The company that owns it offers, among other services, cable modem Internet access. Since our dial-up service was giving us way too many dropouts, and the slowest version (128K) of the cable modem service is only twenty bucks a month, we decided to get it.

So far, it has been working fine. However, I noticed that when the apartment employees were helping us get set up they mentioned absolutely *nothing* about security. There was not a word about the added exposure associated with "always on" systems like cable modems. I have McAfee's anti-virus & firewall running (Home Edition of each), but we all know that such software-based setups are not necessarily the best. I'm considering a hardware firewall, but I don't know very much about how to find the best value.

Here's my request: since my provider seems to be both clueless & apathetic, maybe someone with a bit more experience than me would care to build a fire under their tail. One of you hackers out there should be able to run a script or something for a simulated attack that would find some of the security holes that doubtless exist here. I could then pass the info along to the appropriate people and get some discussion going. If you work for a company that deals in cyber-security, this might be a way for you to drum up some business.

The company that owns this apartment complex has their web site at:

http://www.lindseycom.com

The snail address of the local apartment management:

The Greens
3126A E Valley Water Mill Road
Springfield MO 65803

This should be enough info to give any decent hacker a start.

If anyone out there wants to contact me privately, here's my email address: jj2kk4@yahoo.com

Thanks.

Joel