Hi! I am sorry but I have to disagree here: most hackers are just a bunch of retarded teenagers using hacking "scripts" that are put together by much more talented and intelligent people (the Computer Security specialists). The (other) sad truth is that Linux (and many other systems) are full of security problems -- and that the only way to make big companies such as Microsoft or Sun respond quickly to security threats is to publish the scripts I just mentioned to prove the danger is real. Otherwise, the big companies just don't move -- they try to sweep the problems under the rug, sit on their hands and pretend the problem will go away if they don't talk about it. If you want a (Unix-like) operating system that was designed with security in mind, you should use OpenBSD (which can be found at: http://www.openbsd.org). If you really want to use Linux, then I recommend using Bastille Linux (which can be found at http://www.bastille-linux.org). "Bastille" is a very complex Perl script which tries to make your Linux installation more secure by blocking risky services and possible accesses. Highly recommended. There are other steps that can be taken to protect and "harden" a computer against attacks, but that is beyond the scope of this message. Again: most "hackers" are *not* talented. That does not make the problems of shellworld less important, though. On Wed, 12 Dec 2001 06:00:21 -0600 (CST) Cheryl Homiak <chomiak@chartermi.net> wrote: > In answer to my own question, if anybody else wants to know, shellworld > was attacked by a hacker Saturday and is in the process of getting back on > its feet. I am not naive; I realize there is evil in the world, but I > totally can't comprehend somebody getting a thrill out of destroying other > peoples' installations, especially when somebody with those skills could > probably do really neat things to help people instead. > > Cheryl Best regards, _______________________________________________ Gil Andre -- Technical Writer -- Knox Software gandre@arkeia.com _______________________________________________