Re: [long, boring rambling ;)] Advice on privacy vs advice on security. (was Re: Stopping people finding out uptime?)
On Wed, 2002-04-17 at 20:59, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> On 17 Apr 2002, Jeff Norman wrote:
> > One more thought to add before this thread dies:
>
> It's a pretty good thought, actually, so thanks for bringing it up.
>
...
>
> If the OP had asked about doing this for privacy, not security, I
> probably would have ignored the discussion -- at least, until someone
> did claim it provided security.
>
> What you do for privacy is up to you. I don't bother with that much of
> it, but I know how easy it is to track down information anyway. You may
> and, if so, good luck to you.
>
> In the end, though, privacy comes down to your own level of paranoia and
> a firewall isn't really relevant to it, most of the time.
>
>
> Security, on the other hand, is very relevant to people and it's one of
> the hardest areas to understand, work with and get right. It's also got
> a very high cost in both security and privacy if you get it wrong.
>
> So, when someone suggests something that may provide privacy as being
> something that provides security, I tend to jump on it. If they mistake
> the two then they will end up with neither. :)
>
I agree with the jist of that... Apologies if my post came off a bit
lofty - I sometimes do that. ;)
The point I was trying to bring up was that in a discussion about
firewalls, we needn't be only concerned with how firewalls provide
security, but we can also discuss other aspects of firewall
administration.
The OP didn't actually mention the reasoning behind his wanting to turn
off TCP timestamps, and since most of the conversation was centered
around the "security" of the issue, I just thought I'd interject with
another view.
Don't get me wrong, though, I think that your response was relevant, and
I probably would have made the same point (as well as montioning the
privacy aspect), since it wasn't clear what the intended benefit was.
Jeff
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