RE: how we will program in the future

[Rich Duzenbury <rduz-midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:54 PM 11/10/03, Booth Martin wrote:
> That is a good point Walden. By putting the proper non-Windows protections
> in front of the Windows servers the servers are generally immune.

This is not true.  Putting a firewall in front of a server only prevents 
unwanted access to ports that may be open on the server, but are not meant 
to be public.

In the case of a web server like IIS, or a mail transfer agent like 
SendMail, those ports are open and accessible to the world, and it must be 
so for them to function at all.  Firewalls do not protect such 'open' 
ports.  There has been report after report of buffer overflow 
vulnerabilities in both of these products, and many more like them.  In the 
case of an Intel class machine, the vulnerability generally allows complete 
root or administrator access to the machine once it's compromised.

I've not heard of a buffer overflow vulnerability on the iSeries, even 
though it runs ports of programs like the Apache web server.

Regards,
Rich