Re: Gnome security

[Chris Evans <chris ferret lmh ox ac uk>]

On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Paul Warren wrote:

> > Have you guys ever heard of ipchains/ip firewalling?  Its quite easy to 
> > setup and configure if you only want it to listen to loopback 
> > connections on those ports.  This might be like taking jackhammer to a 
> > penny nail but it will get the job done.
> 
> The average user who is not particularly interested in spending vast
> amounts of time configuring firewalls, is unlikely to be making use of the
> functionality that having these ports open provides.  Likewise, any one

That is exactly it. The Linux audience is now shifting towards less
technically savvy users who don't even know what a
"firewall" is. CORBA? What's that? "Open port"? Huh? etc.

> Distributing something in an insecure-by-default form risks the reputation
> of Gnome, and the O/Ss it runs on as secure platforms.

Amen ;-)

I may have to have another poke at the ORBit code when time permits. I had
some vague idea about RedHat defaulting to blocking the ports from remote
access, but I just telnetted from my mail account to my dialup box, and
had a conversation with my panel applet[1]

Cheers
Chris

[1] OK so it wasn't much of a conversation. I said "hello applet" it said
"aea`hZq"