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Red Hat employee Daniel J. Walsh writes via OpenSource.com
When I was young, Paul Simon released his hit song, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Inspired by this song, I've collected 50 ways sysadmins and laypeople can avoid getting hacked:
"Make a new plan, Stan"
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6. Run applications in the SELinux Sandbox whenever possible--it was a container before containers were cool. Also follow the development of Flatpack, which soon should be developing sandboxing capabilities.7. Don't install or use Flash. Firefox no longer supports it, and hopefully most web servers are moving away from it.
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"Just get yourself free"
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19. [...] I don't do online banking on my phone--only on my Linux computer.
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"Hop on the bus, Gus"21. Run Linux on your systems. When I first hooked my father up with a computer system, I barely got home before his system was infested with viruses. I returned and installed Linux on his system and he has been running it ever since.
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"And get yourself free"
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50. Set up a special guest network for all those Christmas IoT devices your kids receive. I love my Amazon Echo and automated lights and power switches ("Alexa, turn on the Christmas Lights"), but each one of these is a Linux operating system [whose manufacturer's configuration] has questionable security.
Do you take exception with anything he suggests. (Being a Red Hat guy, he is enthusiastic about systemd.) Can you think of something he missed?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 09 2017, @05:04PM
Install WinXP, and start running updates. Meanwhile, visit popular download sites, and download your favorite browser, antivirus, and other applications. Before you got your apps installed, you had infections. This taught me the valuable lessons, 1. only download from the vendor's site (whether that be Mozilla, Avast, or whatever - don't trust those download sites, such as Cnet) and 2. to archive those files that you have downloaded. 2A. was to archive all those updates from Microsoft, so that you didn't NEED to connect to the internet to update your computer. And, finally 3. Use Linux. I've never had an infection on a Linux machine. The worst things I have suffered on Linux were browser hijacks.
Those of you who have never had viruses on your Windows machines will call bullshit on that story. But, it's been documented by credible techies. (To be fair, I don't know how credible Scott Granneman is, but his article confirms other articles I have read in the past.)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/19/infected_in20_minutes/ [theregister.co.uk]
"Let's add a new time frame for computing disaster to the list above, one that every security pro should know: 20 minutes. . . . that's how long your average unprotected PC running Windows XP will last once it's connected to the Internet ... before it's compromised and effectively 0\/\/n3d."