RE: [xml-dev] Can A Web Site Be Reliably Defended Against DoS Att acks?

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

Your proposal (1) is a band aid unless you are claiming that anything
that ever comes out of a zip file must be marked permanently as being
unable to be executed.  

Proposal (2) sounds like a band aid as well. The same sort of band aid,
preventing access to the Outlook address book programmatically turned
out to be since modern worms just look at the files on the hard drive
instead of exploiting the Outlook APIs directly these days. 

As for (3) I don't need root to be a DDoS zombie, just a way to connect
to the Internet. Unless you are claiming that regular home users
shouldn't be able to install software or connect to the Internet. 

Proposal (4) has some promise or it may just be I haven't thought much
about the problems at that layer. 

--
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The heaviest burden a man can carry is a chip on his shoulder. 

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. 

-----Original Message-----
From: jcowan@reutershealth.com [mailto:jcowan@reutershealth.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 2:16 PM
To: Dare Obasanjo
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Can A Web Site Be Reliably Defended Against DoS
Att acks?

Dare Obasanjo scripsit:

> Short of creating a mail client and server that prevented people from 
> receiving mail attachments, how would you solve the problem exploited 
> by this current virus on any one of the popular operating systems 
> existing today?

1) Don't allow executables to be run directly out of mail messages or
archives contained in mail messages (or perhaps any archives at all).

2) Use something other than full-bore executables for screensavers (X
has this problem too, unfortunately)

3) "Friends don't let friends run as root."

4) Modify the SMTP servers used by ISPs (and their government and
academic
equivalents) so they don't accept incoming mail directly from IPs
assigned to customers of other ISPs (the MAPS DUL list is an example of
this).

-- 
Do what you will,                       John Cowan
   this Life's a Fiction                jcowan@reutershealth.com
And is made up of                       http://www.reutershealth.com
   Contradiction.  --William Blake      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan