On Sat, 2005-12-17 at 14:32 -0500, Sean wrote:
It's not just bit-torrent that's only the current example. If you want to imagine every possible future exploit you'd never connect any computer to the internet.
yes and no. Those that open their own ports to be forwarded are rather insiduous. They don't rely on an established/related communication, so any data can come down that forward into the client, not just that which is expected.
The point is setting things up to work easily and with little fuss for the average user. Taking advantage of the facilities provided by their network to make life easier for them. For those people who don't like this feature they can (and should!) disable UPnP on their router because any random appliation could be using it on them otherwise.
And the folks that don't understand the evils of upnp are the folks that are going to leave it open. Secure by default, let users hang themselves w/ the rope that is provided in options.
Really, this introduces very little risk and adds quite a bit of simplification for the average user and is very easy to shut off for anyone who just isn't comfortable with it.
Every bit of little risk adds up into a platform that is risky by default, and folks have to spend effort to 'secure' it after installation. This is a path I would _not_ like to see Fedora go down.
On Sat, December 17, 2005 2:39 pm, Jesse Keating said:
yes and no. Those that open their own ports to be forwarded are rather insiduous. They don't rely on an established/related communication, so any data can come down that forward into the client, not just that which is expected.
This is no different than if the ports are opened manually though. Anyone who has to open them manually is likely to leave them open when they shut down their bit torrent client as well. So really UPnP is more secure because the ports are only forwarded while the application is active.
And the folks that don't understand the evils of upnp are the folks that are going to leave it open. Secure by default, let users hang themselves w/ the rope that is provided in options.
The risk seems very minimal and the reward rather large.
Every bit of little risk adds up into a platform that is risky by default, and folks have to spend effort to 'secure' it after installation. This is a path I would _not_ like to see Fedora go down.
Well almost everything adds a bit of risk; letting a user log into the machine is risky, yet we want our computers to be usable, not just locked in a box with no power cord attached. And in this case using the UPnP facility actually can mitigate some risk as well since the ports are properly closed when not in use. On top of that it makes life easier for users.
Sean