[CentOS] Another Fedora decision

Wed Feb 11 15:03:19 UTC 2015
Always Learning <centos at u64.u22.net>

On Wed, 2015-02-11 at 09:27 -0500, James B. Byrne wrote:


> Most phishing sites do not resemble anything like what one might
> expect.  That is why they work.  Truly, with network security you
> really, really have to develop a pathological paranoia about files
> with unknown origins or you might as well give up on security at all.
> 
> PDFs are known vectors for malware.  They have been exploited in the
> past and no doubt will be exploited in the future.  A PDF file is a
> postscript computer language program with embedded data.  Nothing
> more.  But nothing less either.  Given the network awareness of some
> pdf reader software they are also potential data leaks and web
> beacons.
> 
> That said, I readily admit that the risk posed by this particular
> example is low.  But, it is not zero.  And depending upon the platform
> the file is copied to any non-zero risk, no matter how small, may be
> too much.
> 
> I might put such a file on a stand-alone laptop but I would never put
> it on anything that connected to my networks. I certainly would not
> place it on anything that did not possess a fairly robustly
> constructed firewall with strict limits on outgoing traffic.
> 

I viewed the Russian site from a machine with *NO* network connections.

I sincerely appreciate your well articulated concerns and thank you for
them. I am certain others reading your posting will now be increasing
aware of the constant dangers which await everyone.

In my experience a major method of compromising machines is to send
naive users an email from Amazon, Ebay, their bank - and in the last few
days from all around the world from "amoricanexpress.com" - instructing
the recipient to urgently open the accompanying .zip and read the
message.  Our incoming mail filtering (implemented on Exim) removes more
than 99% of spam and crap. Our servers yesterday accepted the first junk
mail of this year. It was deleted not read.


-- 
Regards,

Paul.
England, EU.      Je suis Charlie.