firewall useless for puppy

[nooby]

if one don't accept to run this one

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/images ... uxmint.swf

Then the editing of the code for posting is not available. I need to hand code all the url and quote and B for bold and such

if I allow the flash ad at upp most to run in Noscript then the editing comes back to normal. So it is not a bad script it only take up some 30% of CPU and slow down things when I have many tabs open

[Luluc]

if one don't accept to run this one

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/images ... uxmint.swf

Then the editing of the code for posting is not available. I need to hand code all the url and quote and B for bold and such

if I allow the flash ad at upp most to run in Noscript then the editing comes back to normal. So it is not a bad script it only take up some 30% of CPU and slow down things when I have many tabs open

Flash is one thing: it runs the ad on the top, right-hand corner. You can block that with the Flash Block add-on/extension. Which, by the way, wouldn't work anymore after I changed my Firefox to run as spot. Removing and reinstalling Flash Block fixed it.

Javascript is another thing: it provides the editing features you mention. You can allow murga-linux scripts on NoScript and go on about your business.

[nooby]

yes and no. You are right about the terms but Noscript has only two choices either I allow Murga and that allow the ad I can not allow only the java for the editing and not allowing the ad

And to have both adblock and noscript seems overkill and I know nothing on how to use adblock either. a new thign to learn and such usually takes weeks or years

[rcrsn51]

Consider this situation:

Suppose there is a web site that I visit regularly and trust. To use its features properly, I have allowed its scripts to run through NoScript. I feel safe.

But suppose that the site gets attacked and a malicious script is inserted into its pages. The next time I visit the page, will NoScript protect me?

[Luluc]

yes and no. You are right about the terms but Noscript has only two choices either I allow Murga and that allow the ad I can not allow only the java for the editing and not allowing the ad

And to have both adblock and noscript seems overkill and I know nothing on how to use adblock either. a new thign to learn and such usually takes weeks or years

I said FlashBlock. Not adblock. FlashBlock blocks Flash. Those ads are Flash.

[Luluc]

Consider this situation:

Suppose there is a web site that I visit regularly and trust. To use its features properly, I have allowed its scripts to run through NoScript. I feel safe.

But suppose that the site gets attacked and a malicious script is inserted into its pages. The next time I visit the page, will NoScript protect me?

No.

[Béèm]

As luluc says, flash isn't the same as java or javascript.
As for the BBCode, I didn't know that java script had to be on.
I just turned it off and indeed everything has to be typed by hand then.

[nooby]

oops I am sorry. You did write Flashblock and my poor brain did only know about adblock plus and trusted that was the one you referred to so I went and installed Adblock and accepted Murga in Noscript but set it up to block that ad then. So now I can do this

rcrsn51 yes I know that is why it is so difficult but I visit a lot of sites and some protection is better than none at all.

I will go back to the ron broswer as spot thread instead and hope to get help to set it up there and helping me get it will help everybody on my level too

Is Flashbloc compatible with running Noscript at same time?
Is Flashbloc better or easier to use compared to Adblock plus?

should I uninstall the adblock thing then?

[puppyite]

There is another problem that few people seem to give consideration to: zombies quietly using people's computers for nefarious purposes has become a real problem out there on the net. They use them for denial of service attacks and I think for distributed brute-force login attacks. These attacks don't hurt your computer, but use it for nasty purposes against others.

While it may not hurt your computer it may well cause problems if your IP address ends up in here: Offensive IP Database.

[rcrsn51]

There is another problem that few people seem to give consideration to: zombies quietly using people's computers for nefarious purposes has become a real problem out there on the net. They use them for denial of service attacks and I think for distributed brute-force login attacks. These attacks don't hurt your computer, but use it for nasty purposes against others.

And according to Luluc, the Puppy firewall is incapable of detecting and stopping that kind of activity.

[nooby]

Then we need a Firefox that can stop it?

what about Iron being a clone to Chromium that use sandboxes would that not help?

[Béèm]

Those zombies using ones PC have to install/introduce executable code first. Very well possible in an unprotected Windows machine, but on a Linux machine? Is there already code for this?
As of today i don't think so. Maybe in some years from now.
Different story if you have also wine on your linux machine.

But there is something I don't quite get.
My ISP blocks almost all ports.
So such a D-O-S attack should go through port 80 then?

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

or all the 100,000 of sites that get injection code attacks weekly. Why would they do such if it did not work for them to get money that way?

Very, very, very few are doing it to get money. They're doing it because they think it's fun to annoy and disrupt and destroy. They're kids throwing rocks through windows or ringing the doorbell and leaving Puppy Poop on your doorstep. They think it's fun to have hundreds of popups appear in your browser or scramble your display and that it's even more fun to shut down a business that relies on computers.

They're children who weren't raised to conform with society's standards.

[miriam]

very few are doing it to get money... They're kids

Actually, it seems it is very big money these days. While there are certainly plenty of script-kiddie vandals, I have heard that the Mafia has moved a lot of operations from drugs and weapons to computer crime because the profits are big and the risks low.

Here is a documentary on the topic at Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National program Background Briefing:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbrie ... 955341.htm
(transcript and downloadable audio on that page)

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

very few are doing it to get money... They're kids

Actually, it seems it is very big money these days. While there are certainly plenty of script-kiddie vandals, I have heard that the Mafia has moved a lot of operations from drugs and weapons to computer crime because the profits are big and the risks low.

I was talking specifically about injection code attacks, not computer crime.

Here is a documentary on the topic at Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National program Background Briefing:

And the public has bad habits, they forget their passwords, they don't update their virus protection every 12 hours as they should, they give strangers their credit card details, they download dodgy computer games.

And how does a firewall prevent this?

But the right thing seems to mean buying anti-virus software every year, downloading updates every day, buying the most recent software packages for $300 to $400, or even replacing our computer every couple of years.

I’m still not seeing the firewall... and I know there are free anti-virus packages that work just as well as the $400 packages. Just how many viruses are there that attack Puppy? Do Puppy developers recommend replacing our computer every couple of years?

And here, at the security conference for instance, are scantily clad women handing out leaflets to the mostly male delegates. Other people are giving away yo-yos, pens and toys.

And a firewall will keep away those scantily clad women?

Taking Nigeria as an example, the police estimate $2-1/2-million leaves Australia each month. That's $30-million a year. Over the past 14 months in Queensland, the Police Fraud Squad has spoken to 139 people who've been sending half a million dollars a month.

And that's just to Nigeria, from people responding to phishing emails, despite the widespread publicity about such scams.

Too bad these people didn’t have a firewall.

Exactly nothing in that broadcast applied to personal home computer firewalls. All it said was that there are con men and suckers, nothing new in human history.

[miriam]

Actually code injection has little to do with firewalls either. It often gains control of a server by tricking it into thinking that a person has valid privileged access... though there are other ways and purposes code injection can be used for.

As detailed in the doco much real damage is done through convincing the user to part with money through appealing to greed or just plain gullibility. The way that relates to firewalls is that firewalls are absolutely no use at all in those cases. In this respect sickgut is correct. Perhaps they do give a false sense of security and maybe we should concentrate more upon other forms of security. I really don't know, but I thought the extra info would be useful, especially if people think that it is mostly the work of amateur kiddies. There really are darker forces involved... yes, organised crime, but more recently than the doco, now that the US and Israel's Mossad have unleashed the stuxnet virus on Iran's nuclear facilities, we can probably all expect nasty repercussions. And China's concerted efforts to break into gmail to get at the accounts of human rights activists means this whole thing is developing a distinctly unpleasant flavor.

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

The way that relates to firewalls is that firewalls are absolutely no use at all in those cases. In this respect sickgut is correct. Perhaps they do give a false sense of security and maybe we should concentrate more upon other forms of security. I really don't know, but I thought the extra info would be useful, especially if people think that it is mostly the work of amateur kiddies. There really are darker forces involved... yes, organised crime, but more recently than the doco, now that the US and Israel's Mossad have unleashed the stuxnet virus on Iran's nuclear facilities, we can probably all expect nasty repercussions.

Firewalls on Iranian computers prevented infections of stuxnet via the Internet; that virus was put in place by spies on the ground using infected USB sticks. This was a failure to guard the hardware. I guess the moral here is to keep your front door locked and your USB ports guarded.

I said nothing about amateur kiddies or kiddie scripts; some of these destructive non-monetary hacker/crackers are among the best programmers in the world and have broken into some of the most heavily guarded facilities in the world including U.S. Defense Department computer systems. Probably the only defense is physical security, isolation from the net and denying unauthorized personnel physical access to computers. These are kiddies only in behavior, not in skill. They are more sociopathic than criminal. They're after damage, not money.

Some of these destructive virus writers are politically anarchists attacking governments and the whole infrastructure of Western civilization, especially banking, multinational corporations and capitalism in general. They want to disrupt business as usual. Anarchists may likely do more damage than Chinese or Israeli attackers.

[sickgut]

Bernie_by_the_Sea re:

"Firewalls on Iranian computers prevented infections of stuxnet via the Internet; that virus was put in place by spies on the ground using infected USB sticks. This was a failure to guard the hardware. I guess the moral here is to keep your front door locked and your USB ports guarded."

Can stuxnet virus infect Puppy Linux?

[Bernie_by_the_Sea]

Can stuxnet virus infect Puppy Linux?

No.

It wouldn't matter if it could since it only targets and damages one thing, a particular model of a Siemens centrifuge used for enriching uranium. This is a military virus. It causes the centrifuge to overheat by spinning faster and not report that it's overheating. Allegedly it damaged about 10% of Iran's nuclear centrifuges and there was some collateral damage to centrifuges in India. Or maybe it wasn't collateral; maybe they were after both countries.

[sickgut]

Hello fellow dogfarmers

so am i to understand that there is not one verifiable threat out there that can mess with a puppy system that is not protected by its software firewalll, and that can be stopped with its software firewall?

This thread has had 99 posts including this one, but none of them mention any example of a threat that can be verified. Some of the posts are about bad websites but none of them actually give an address you can goto and see this threat in action.

Alot of people still say that you must have a firewall in Puppy for protection, but I would have thought it reasonable that just one example of a valid threat could be documented and posted here. This leads me to believe that the threat is non existent.

If the community that builds and maintains Puppy and is more knowledgeable about Puppy than any other community, cannot povide one documented instance of a threat that can be reproduced then im quite certain there is no threat.

sickgut