Rant about Re: [lug] worm article

[Scott A. Herod]

Perhaps this is a GOOD thing :-(.  Apparently, it removes the exploit 
that it uses without opening a back door.  It just a good Samaritan
at work closing security holes.

<rant on>

Seriously, I hope that RH ( and the other distributors ) take the
bad press to heart.  Joe-Six-Pack computer user should not have to
work hard to change the default installation of his OS to close
numerous security holes.  Instead of everything on by default,
the distro's should turn everything off by default.  For example,
why are the nfs utilities on by default in RH 6.2?

Some people have asked on /. whether OS X will hurt linux.  I 
think it's a good thing.  A non-MS consumer OS that competes
well against the linux distro's is good for all.

<rant off>

Thanks for letting me say that.

Scott

Tom Tromey wrote:
> 
> >>>>> ">" == D Stimits <stimits at idcomm.com> writes:
> 
> >> Argggh. This was the wrong one. The relevant link is:
> >> http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4508359-0.html
> 
> Here's a link which has more technical detail:
> 
>     http://members.home.net/dtmartin24/ramen_worm.txt
> 
> One relevant quote:
> 
>     Finally, fixes for all the vulnerabilities that this worm uses have
>     been freely available from RedHat since at least early October, 2000.
> 
> Red Hat has been getting a lot of bad press lately.  I've noticed a
> lot of it here.  Some of it is deserved, I'm sure.  Like any
> organization, Red Hat makes mistakes.  Hopefully this is one of the
> times that the bad press isn't deserved.  I'm sure someone will
> correct me if I'm mistaken :-)
> 
> Tom