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| Thread ID: 39906 | 2003-11-21 10:10:00 | Tip: Surviving the first few hours of Windows XP... | stu140103 (137) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 193673 | 2003-11-21 10:10:00 | Here is something that might interests people who might be upgrading to Win XP From IDGNet Virus & Security Watch for Friday 21 November 2003 * Surviving the first few hours of Windows XP... Background levels of Blaster, and other malware spreading through common security misconfigurations or unpatched vulnerabilities in 'virgin' Windows XP installations, are high enough to cause serious problems, particularly for newly acquired or installed machines. In most parts of the Internet you cannot connect a default installation of Windows XP to the net and download the necessary service packs and/or system and application security patches and hotfixes in the time it will take for one or more of these viruses, worms and other malware programs to infest the machine. Faced with such a scenario, what do you do to ensure that the new PC and high-speed Internet connection you plan for Christmas is not chewing huge amounts of your expensive bandwidth serving wares, spewing viruses and worms and so on within a few minutes of being extracted from the packaging and all plugged-in? The incident handlers and others at the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC) have put together a step-by-step guide explaining the minimum system hardening steps necessary to safely connect an otherwise 'virgin' Windows XP machine to the Internet. The thirteen page, 1.2 MB PDF describes, in simple language and with plenty of illustrative screen shots, disabling File and Print Sharing, the need for setting strong passwords, enabling Internet Connection Firewall and a few related procedures. Equally important, it explains the steps involved in using Windows Update for the first time, which is usually a multi-step 'patch, reboot, repeat' process although this is not necessarily obvious to many users. So, if you are considering upgrading to XP or to a new XP machine, or if you know other home or small business users struggling with an 'unusable' Internet connection, this guide may be just the ticket... (Note that if you do use this guide, more complete material covering fully hardening XP systems is linked in the 'References' section.) Windows XP: Surviving the First Day - isc.sans.org (PDF) (isc.sans.org) |
stu140103 (137) | ||
| 193674 | 2003-11-21 10:16:00 | Hehehe.. Funny thing is the people have to be online to download the PDF.... and get the reader... :p Looks cool though :-) |
Chilling_Silently (228) | ||
| 193675 | 2003-11-21 11:05:00 | Nice article Stu. My woes in the first few hours of XP were just learning to customise the interface! Damn I hated it at first - now it's my only true love (oops - after the Missus of course!) |
Greg S (201) | ||
| 193676 | 2003-11-21 11:13:00 | > The thirteen page, 1.2 MB PDF A bit off topic I know, but I still cannot understand the popularity of pdf documents - that 1.2 meg file coulda been a quarter of that size in html + jpg's |
Greg S (201) | ||
| 193677 | 2003-11-21 13:12:00 | I just did a quick test and the TXT+PNG version is 492KB (JPGs are 532KB & look awful for screenshots) . The raw (PPM) images total 7MB, so the PDF compression isn't terrible . For a document that will probably be printed PDF has the advantage of consistant formatting . Getting back on topic . . . it is a very useful document and I will be sending it to a couple of people . There must still be a lot of infected people out there, for me the average number of attempts hasn't died off at all (average 1 every 26 seconds) . |
bmason (508) | ||
| 193678 | 2003-11-21 19:05:00 | Things like RPC and Upnp services on by default seems strange. | mark.p (383) | ||
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