[nzlug] E: Couldn't find package sun-java5-jdk

[Martin Bähr]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 09:50:53AM +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> Please upgrade; without doing so you provide another base for criminals
> to exploit to abuse the rest of us.

while i agree that upgrading is a good idea, i think that comment is
pushing it. just because your distribution is old does not automaticly
make you vulnerable. to be vulnerable you need to run services that have
remote exploits or clients that allow for trojans. 

if you do not run any services at all, or block any outside access to the
machine with a firewall running on a router and if you further do not
run any clients that handle remote data (webbrowsers, email) then you
are not vulnerable because there is no way into your machine.

at worst you could suffer from a denial of service attack like the ping
of death (but even that only if you don't have the above mentioned
firewall)

however: making an assessment of whether you are vulnerable or not,
takes some experience. i don't have that experience, so i prefer to
upgrade once in a while :-)

greetings, martin.
-- 
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Martin Bähr       http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/