11-29-1999

Hi, I work for an Information Security company in the DC area. I was asked
a question today, if we have seen or heard of anybody running FW-1 on
Solaris for NT. I have not seen anybody do that, have you? if so can you
offer any technical feedback whether or not you think this is a good idea
bad idea or just what... I thank you in advance. You have an excellent web
page and I appreciate the work that you do.

Have a nice Thanksgiving holiday

Chris

Ok, here are my thoughts on firewalls. They're obviously only as secure as their underlying-architecture. IE, in the case you mentioned above, it's obvious that the individual is far more confident in the security of his solaris box, than he is in the security of his NT box. Personally, I wouldn't run a firewall on either. I'm one of those "evil rat bastards" that think that a firewall should run on its own proprietary system that has only what it needs to work, without any extra exploitable-fluff. I think that running a firewall on an NT or solaris box is about as evil as using one of those boxes to do routing. Get yourself a Pix. I'm not the biggest fan in the prices of Cisco products, but I am definitely a big cisco fan. For those of you not familiar, check out this page on Firewall-1, and this page on Cisco Pix Firewalls.

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Hey JP, is that virtual security expert's picture a pic of your dad? Or even you? If so, why do you have such a ugly person in your family, because that ugliness can be spread through your family and to your kids and you may have some serious problems and it may last forever and never end and the world will be destroyed and various other fun stuff.

Any case, I was just curious

Johnny Bravo

*HACK THE WORLD* or some lame **** like that, lets try this one... *FREE KEVIN*.. nah, im not cool enuff yet.. oh wait! *SOLARIS RULES!*, nah, didn't do it for me either.. oh I got it! *ANTIONLINE SUCKS!* now I'm feelin better.

As for who Bub is, read the archived mailbags. Been there, explained that. As for the last paragraph of your letter. That has to be the damn funniest tagline I've seen sent to me so far. Maybe I'll even start using it at the end of my e-mails too. Hell, it would be great to put on an AntiOnline T-shirt or mousepad too. You better get that copyrighted before I do ;-)

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Sir.

I'm writing in regards to the 'Fight Back' section of your page, which gives an explanation on how your accessing of web pages can be monitored by anyone between your connection and the internet. My question has to deal with a further aspect of the same idea. When you access a news server to download binaries from a newsgroup, is the same monitoring able to take place? The reason I ask is that when I signed up for my cable modem, part of the acceptable use policy was no downloading of any material deemed 'unacceptable' by the cable company. The technician who installed the modem related that such material would be Pornography, unpurchased software called warez, and beyond that, I was told to 'use my common sense.'

I have a pay-for account from a company named Supernews, but was wondering if my cable-modem company could still monitor my downloads. Is that still possible, though I'm not using their news server?

Thanks, and keep up the good work protecting us less-than-knowledgable computer people.

Croww

Believe it or not, back in my highschool-days I helped write several "Acceptable Use Policies" that are currently in use by several school districts around this area. The first thing that you need to realize is that the term "Unacceptable" is a vague one, the type that politicians put in laws that they simply want thrown away the first time a case prosecuted under it comes under appeal. Not that your ISP is any sort of public authority, but I always found the language funny. Secondly, unlike the public schools that I helped write these policies for, your computer is your private property, just as your home is a private place. Your ISP has no right to monitor your "on-line activities" at all, and even the federal authorities have to get a warrant signed by a judge showing "probable cause" before they're able to tap into your digital domain. So, unless you set up a "public service", such as a website or ftpsite that you're distributing "unacceptable materials" from, there's nothing that your ISP can, or should, do about it. You'll find that most ISPs (and school districts for that matter), simply make you sign "Acceptable Use Policies" in order to cover their own legal butts, and really don't care about you at all.

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Hi,

Been visiting your site for a few years and has always been a great place to
visit. I have one question what software (if any) or how do you tell if
some1 is trying to hack into you system i.e. Port Scann Detections ect.

Thanks

PaulT

Well, for the home user that feels that their digital-security
is worth $40, I currently recommend a product called BlackICE. I did a review of it a while back. It's the best I've seen on the market.

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Just wanted to say thanks for taking my suggestion on making the mailbag
available for people to read from their Palm Pilots...It's a nice
feature...

--

Chris Mayoros

Yup. Ask and yee did receive. They don't call me the "AntiChrist Of The Internet" for nuttin. For those of you that didn't know, you can get the latest from AntiOnline on your PalmPilot or other hand-held wonder. Scarry, isn't it?

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JP,

[In reguards to your December 3rd lecture] me and my boys plan on being there. You don't expect any trouble because if you do let us know and we can more than protect you. You should
really consult with the local PD and tell them what you expect and if it
seems credible they will do what it takes to make sure things get done
right. All of them are not just fat assed donut swallowers, some of em know
how to shoot as well.

- Richard Golodner

Personally, I'm starting to think that most people that will be attending this lecture aren't paying the $499/head to listen to me talk. I think that they're paying to see if there will be an assassination attempt. Cute. I really hope that HFG doesn't show up carrying, because Carolyn Meinel isn't going to be at this lecture to watch my back.

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flatwhite Submitted The Following:

i am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. i balance, i weave, i dodge, i frolic, and my bills are all paid. on weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. i can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. when I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my garden. i enjoy urban hang gliding. on Wednesdays, after school, i repair electrical appliances free of charge. while on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. i play bluegrass cello, I had trials with Manchester United, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire.
using only a yellow piece of paper and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants.
i am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in Madrid, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and chess competitions at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. i am an expert in sleeping techniques, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.my deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. i translate ethnic slurs for Kenyan refugees, i write award-winning operas, i manage time efficiently. im the lizard king i can do anything i can make the earth stop in its tracks and i can make the blue cars go away ¿ i know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. i have performed several covert operations for the CIA. years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. i once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening.
the laws of physics do not apply to me. i sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair.i have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. i can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. i have made extraordinary four course meals using only some vegetables and a Breville Toaster. occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. i woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing

And you also waste my time and yours by sending me this mindless bullshit. What is wrong with your head?

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A couple years ago, Circuit City introduced a movie format called Divix. I'm sure you are familiar with it. Time took its course and killed this format. Now I am stuck with a few good movies in Divix format and no way to play them. Are there any software cracks available, so that I could view these movies on my computer's DVD player? If so, where could I get this or if you even knew where I could look...it would be most helpful. Thanks for the help....dig the site.

-- Adam A.

Uh-oh, look who tried to predict tech trends and failed miserably doing so. Heh. I sympathize with the fact that you're trying to put that wasted money of yours to use, but give it up. Throw them into the same pile as your 8-tracks and move on with your life. It's better that way, trust me.

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Please advise what security risks exist when accessing hacker sites and newsgroups posted on your web pages.

Thanks

Stuart Perkins

I assume that you're talking about the links in our "Eye On The Underground" page. Well, to be honest, I would consider the sites that we link to there "tame". There are many,many underground sites that try to do evil things with Java and ActiveX (which is why I surf with those "features" shut off). However, the sites that we link to on that page pretend to be mainstream for the most part, and wouldn't risk trying to screw you over using those types of methods. But, I will warn you of this. Be very, very, careful of evil "social engineering" techniques which may be in play on some of those sites.

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Hello John,

Brilliant site, you've probably heard it all before but anyway.
Now the reason I am writing is to ask how I would go about make a page like your eye on the underground, I have heard that it is automatically updated by a special script or program. I would like to make a page like this for the latest info on football.
Please reply as I have asked everyone how to do this but with no feedback.

Cheers Joe.

Oh yes, our "Eye On The Underground". Let me be frank with you Joe, that page is a bitch to run. I know, it looks ooooh so very simple. Honestly, it would be simple if it weren't hacker sites that we were dealing with. It started out as a simple perl script. Then I said to myself, "self, why not do something cool, and program it in rebol". So I did. Of course, rebol is relatively new, and I found that it didn't allow for some important things. Namely, a convenient way to get rid of all of the evil rat-bastard javascript, server-side-includes, and other goodies that hackers put on their site to try to fowl up our "Eye On The Underground" page. So, I have part of it running a rebol script and part a perl script. But oh no, the fun doesn't stop there. Some hackers got pissed that I was keeping an "eye" on their websites, and configured their servers to deny any accesses from *.antionline.*, *.askbub.*, *.antisearch.*, and *.anticode.*. Cute. So, I simply set up our server to go through a proxy when it downloaded information from those pages. But, the ever resilient hackers went through their webserver logs to find a pattern which matched the update times on our "eye". Sooo, I had to come up with a list of 25 proxies that are randomly picked, dynamically configured into the rebol network setup, and THEN the webpages are downloaded, filtered, formatted, and finally, after a random time is picked so that hackers can't find a pattern of 25 proxies in their logs, displayed for your viewing pleasure. My life sucks sometimes, really. So, Joe. Unless the NFL decides they want to try to ***** you over, write a simple script in perl.

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I was just wonderin' something, you show all the hack attempts, but how many times have the hackers succeded??? i have seen articles mentioning people hacking into antionline, and was wondering why you dont also advertise this fact to the public?

Yours sincerely

Tim Spencer

We get 200-500 hack attempts an hour. To date, no one has ever gained administrative access to any of our systems. As far at these "articles" that you mentioned. You're probably referring to this. As I mentioned above, hackers have been a constant pain in the ass as far as our "Eye On The Underground" is concerned. Some Russian guy (what did you expect?) managed, after what looks like hours of work, to write a complex javascript, which he then posted to a webboard, which had its own filtering that he managed to bypass, that caused the "eye" to auto-refresh to another site. That's the only "security incident", if you want to call it that, which has had any type of success. But, considering what's involved with that page, I never felt too bad about it.