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Posted by RolYat on April 21, 2005, 2:50 pm
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For network security, and expertise, does one have to know UNIX, Linux
et al to avoid many of the pitfalls such OS's can 'launch' on a Windows
machine?
Or can one simply excel in Windows networking security, and still be
considered an "expert"?
What do the, erm, experts think?
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Posted by Moe Trin on April 21, 2005, 2:38 pm
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>For network security, and expertise, does one have to know UNIX, Linux
>et al to avoid many of the pitfalls such OS's can 'launch' on a Windows
>machine?
If you are never going to have a non-windoze O/S. then there is less of
a need for UNIX. After all, the stuff you have to work with it the stuff
that is important to you. However - having *nix knowledge is not a
hindrance, and may be highly useful. The basic concepts of networking
pre-date microsoft, and IP (literally) goes back to late 1979 (the
current standard RFC0791 replaced RFC0760 which was _released_ as a
standard on 01/01/1980, which is before microsoft bought QDOS to get
into the operating system business.
0791 Internet Protocol. J. Postel. Sep-01-1981. (Format: TXT=97779
bytes) (Obsoletes RFC0760) (Updated by RFC1349) (Also STD0005)
(Status: STANDARD)
That's just 20 days after IBM introduced the original IBM PC, with DOS
1.0, a release so crippled that it didn't even support directories (or
folders to use the Xerox name that Apple adopted and used for several
years before windoze invented it). Microsoft didn't invent networking
until 1992 (Windoze for Workgropes - which used an incompatible
networking concept that still negatively influences current versions
of windoze), and didn't discover the Internet until even later (NT was
1994).
Also, know that UNIX is a trade name, and covers a number of different
branded operating systems. Linux, and *BSD are not branded as UNIX,
although they have similar concepts and look much alike. Also know that
applications that run on *nix are not part of the operating system, but
are often supplied with it, or available. Examples would be the original
Lawrence Berkeley Labs traceroute (which is far more versatile than
the intentionally broken version supplied with windoze), whois, hping2,
netcat and netgrep, and the several nameserver query tools.
>Or can one simply excel in Windows networking security, and still be
>considered an "expert"?
Leaving the religious question of whether windoze even has any network
security (after all, why is there such a huge secondary market of tools
that users need but microsoft didn't include, like usable firewalls), you
would certainly be limiting yourself if you did not study other operating
systems. For example, http://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers
lists 137 different network protocols that may be used over the wire. Any
clue what they are, and why they exist? Also, can you say how many routers
run windoze? What are portnumbers below 1024 considered differently from
those above 1024?
Old guy
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Posted by M Trimble on April 21, 2005, 4:13 pm
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>
> For network security, and expertise, does one have to know UNIX, Linux et
> al to avoid many of the pitfalls such OS's can 'launch' on a Windows
> machine?
>
> Or can one simply excel in Windows networking security, and still be
> considered an "expert"?
>
> What do the, erm, experts think?
Oxymoron: [n] [ok-sé-moh-rahn] see also Windows Security
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Posted by Keme on April 21, 2005, 6:46 pm
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> For network security, and expertise, does one have to know UNIX, Linux
> et al to avoid many of the pitfalls such OS's can 'launch' on a Windows
> machine?
>
> Or can one simply excel in Windows networking security, and still be
> considered an "expert"?
>
> What do the, erm, experts think?
Windows is a general purpose OS. In Windows server you can set up a
router with all necessary security measures. The main problem with
Windows security is its many features. (What one person considers a
feature, another sees as a bug :-) ) Windows tries to hit a balance
between accessibility and security.
Windows is the most widespread OS, so if you are really good at security
setup in the windows world, you'll be considered a valuable expert by a
large number of potential clients. That may be more important to you
than getting recognition from other, self-appointed "experts".
On the other hand, for high security applications Windows is not
considered an optimal choice, because some of the mentioned "features"
represent holes that often need to be blocked. The BSD varieties, to
name one other OS family, default to a "secure install", where you have
to actively install the features you want.
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Posted by Tony Lawrence on April 22, 2005, 10:53 am
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> For network security, and expertise, does one have to know UNIX, Linux
> et al to avoid many of the pitfalls such OS's can 'launch' on a Windows
> machine?
>
> Or can one simply excel in Windows networking security, and still be
> considered an "expert"?
>
> What do the, erm, experts think?
I am not an expert (http://aplawrence.com/wiz.html).
However, I am of the opinion that no knowledge is wasted. In fact,
sometimes experts are baffled by problems that generalists may see
immediately. Many times my programming knowledge, weak and scattered as
it may be, has enabled me to guess how another programmer may have
approached a problem which in turn let me see why that approach might be
confused by x, y or z. And an incredible number of times just having
knowledge of what came before, how we got here from TRS80's and
Commodore 64's, has given me an insight I might not have otherwise had.
That said, if you are really out to be an expert, you do need to focus.
For me, that's just not something I can do: too many things interest
me, and not just in the computer field either. But even limiting it to
computers, as fascinating as I might find a particular area, too many
other areas attract my interest, so at best I have a very shallow
understanding of a lot of different computerish things. About the only
thing that doesn't interest me is graphics, which is fortunate - at
least there is one area I don't have to clutter my brain with.
As to Unix, as it all started there, it seems important to me that a
networking security expert should be more than aware of Unix. I remember
being in a meeting with a large reseller around the early 90's. I
advanced the opinion that Microsoft was going to have to embrace tcp/ip
or die. I was just about laughed out of the meeting.. and told that we
old Unix junkies were a dying breed.. well, we're still here, and
Microsoft may be the "dying breed". More and more businesses have
returned to Unix/Linux for at least some functions and the trend seems
to indicate that's going to continue unless Microsoft buys all the
governments it can afford.. so it would seem to me that you HAVE to be
Unix savvy if you are going to conscientously offer security services to
anyone.
Besides, "I don't know Unix" is often a crock:
http://aplawrence.com/Blog/B1066.html
--
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com
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