[cap-talk] Polaris: Virus Safe Computing for Windows XP

[Mark Miller]

>>Karp, Alan H wrote:
>>>After all, firewalls don't make us perfectly safe, but
>>>no one advocates abandoning them.

I wrote:
>>Just for the record, I do.

Karp, Alan H wrote:
> Be careful.  A fellow here hooked up a Windows machine directly to his
> DSL connection.  Withing 15 minutes it was hacked so badly he had to
> completely rebuild it.

I should have made the time frame clear. I do not advocate abandoning 
firewalls yet. I was speaking long term.

We must first abandon grossly vulnerable end point OSes, which unfortunately 
includes all currently deployed OSes. Once one has abandoned these OSes, then 
I advocate abandoning firewalls as well.

Even in my fantasy future, I expect we will continue to run or simulate legacy 
OSes in order to run legacy software, essentially forever, but these should be 
suitably confined.

-- 
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

     Cheers,
     --MarkM