RE: zotob - blocking tcp/445

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1

>'enterprise security folks' are probably not the issue... The fact
remains
>that lots of folks DO do this :frowning: There are quite a few folks between
>'consumer' and 'enterprise' that do all manner of dumb things on the
>Internet (where 'dumb' is equivalent to running smb shares across

the

>public network minus encryption/ipsec). It's their choice to do that,
and
>their network providers are expected/demanded to pass those packets

for

>them.

>-Chris

Surely the ratio of 'useful' traffic compared to 'junk' for a

particular

protocol must be considered. What percentage of netbios entering a

on your piece of the network you can consider the ratio of pigs to
birds,
or good to bad traffic or phases of the moon, it's your network do what
you will. I can say that if you have a vocal enough customer the blocks
won't last very long, or the customer will find another network to
connect
to...

*** Rules are going to be different for residential vs. business
customers. Business customers who aren't on crack probably know better
to block netbios in and out. But residential customers, I think you'll
win more customers than lose by taking some proactive blocking measures.

service provider's edge is intentional? 1%? 0.1%? I'm guessing much
less than that. If 5 or 6 nines worth of a particular protocol

entering

or leaving an ISP's network is unintentional, and highly susceptible

to

viral activity, isn't it in our best interest to block it? With

proper

your best interest might be to do that sure... 'your network, your
call'.

notification to subscribers and instructions on setting up

host-to-host

PPTP/whatever, blocking netbios can solve a large bunch of issues....

please send my instructions for host-to-host pptp that my grandmother
can
follow without help of techsupport.

*** Well, if you grandmother is already familiar with mapping drives and
modifying her lmhosts file.... :slight_smile:

2

Whatever happened to the War On Drugs, anyhow? :slight_smile:

I think you're overestimating the security clue of most businesses. I'd
*love* to be proved wrong by somebody citing a credible survey indicating that
most businesses *are* Getting It Right....

3

I think Sean Donelan had a survey he quoted a few months ago saying that
most enterprises are still the den of iniquity... but I could have that
backwards.

4

The average business and average home user have similar computer infection
rates based on the data I saw on the ISP networks. Pretty much anyway
you sliced the data, e.g. goverment, financial, marketing, education,
health care, high tech, low tech, home users, etc have similar rates.
Neither the size of the organization nor regulatory environment seems
to be a factor.

However, different individual organizations can have very different
infection rates. What's interesting is within a particlar organization,
the infection rate tends to be homogenous: either better or worse. Two
companies in the same industry group can have dramatically different
infection rates that persist for a long time. But when you add together
all the companies in the industry group, the industry group average is
the same across all the groups.

Law of large numbers, regression to the mean, etc.