Re: Protecting Home Machines

[Don Voss <voss () albany edu>]

Cherian,

Non trivial question. I have been trying to keep home laptops stable 
here also. The best I can do is some education. They are, for the most 
part personally owned .. or treated that way most times.

If they bring them in for a dhcp connection in their offices .. I have 
to authorize the mac > ip to get them on .. thats when I patch, patch, 
patch .. + make sure virus protection is loaded, current. The patches 
should take care of the known .. the new ones we are all open to. We use 
norton corp version. This is where virus crosses over to worms .. I do 
not care to debate the descriptions .. hostile is hostile.

I have a simple setup at home: cable modem .. a linksys .. closed down 
as much as I know how .. and the machines use it's nat. Currently 
patched and  with norton material. Very non-tech users [my family] .. so 
far so good. I have considered something like this to recommend to 
faculty but they would not consider it .. the smart ones ask what I do.

To roll a procedure out as a policy is the real question .. which I 
would like to hear what other larger places are doing. One would need to 
"own" the laptop .. vpn material ? virus protection, what else ? Can 
they be screened when it comes in and attach to a domain .. push 
patches, etc.

/don

Cherian M. Palayoor wrote:

> I have a remote user whose laptop was severely infected by the trojans
> MSBLAST & WiNSHOW.A.
>
> I reinstalled the OS on the machine following a complete reformat, and
> installed an anti-virus with the latest update. I ran a complete scan on the
> machine prior to shipping the machine back to the user.
>
> However as soon as the user took back the machine home, he was infected by
> another worm (NACHI.A) within a few minutes of connecting to the internet
> through his high speed cable modem. He swears that he had not downloaded
> anything nor tried any removable media on this machine.
>
> Following a bit of research on the matter, I am now aware that it is possible
> for machines to get infected on the fly especially through unprotected home
> internet connections.
>
> The question is, "What do I do to prevent such occurrences which have
> increased of late."
>
> My thanks in advance for any thoughts or words of advise. 
>
>
> CP
>
>
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