Re: [SLUG] Are you viewed as a computer criminal? (fwd)

From: Derek Glidden (dglidden@illusionary.com)
Date: Mon May 28 2001 - 00:50:07 EDT


bill wrote:
>
> On Sat, 26 May 2001, R P Herrold wrote:
>
> > From another list -- Written in a low key style, but perhaps
> > not low key encough. It might be fun to add specific examples
> > and TCPdump traces of a box 'phoning home' , and gin it up
> > into a web page ... With a little rework, it would also make a
> > nice handout as a 'takeaway' at a trade show ...
>
> with all the MS haters, you'd think someone has tries snarfing packets
> from a fresh windows installation to see, but i couldn't find any on the
> web.

I have. No strange packets that I've ever noticed. But note
_carefully_ that this is from a virginal installation. My Windows
partition currently, with the half-dozen or so games installed that I
still keep Windows 98 around to play, regularly sends out a dozen or so
packets to three or four different IP addresses every time it boots up.
Which is why I have that machine completely firewalled from sending data
over the network except to approved IPs through proxies...

Generally speaking though, they're just a bunch of "hello there" type
packets to various company web servers. It's bull$$it nonetheless -
those guys have no business occupying _my_ bandwidth to gather marketing
data on me for software I've bought and paid for.

However, I'd be going a bit far if I tried to claim it was some sort of
legal enforcement pseudo-virus...

> i did find the ol' backdoor password that was planted by a few microsoft
> developers, apparently as a joke, from about a year ago:
>
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2543490,00.html
>
> but that's about it...

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
With Microsoft products, failure is not           Derek Glidden
an option - it's a standard component.      http://3dlinux.org/
Choose your life.  Choose your            http://www.tbcpc.org/
future.  Choose Linux.              http://www.illusionary.com/



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