Live USB drives

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ken_sylvania
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by ken_sylvania »

Robert wrote: The reason for the botnets is because there are so many more linux servers. If you look at it from percentages, Windows servers are much more vulnerable because there is a higher percent if them in the botnets then there are servers on the net.

Most desktop installs of Linux are very safe. It is when someone goes tweaking it, that issues can arise. Yes, all systems have vulnerabilities. One should always consider the percentages when looking at something like this. The percentage chance of getting a virus on a linux desktop is so low, that virus software is not needed. This. in itself, speeds up the system and reduces resources needed to run. This makes it a really good alternative for older systems.
:up: Good points.
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lesterb
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by lesterb »

Back in Ontario I did some work on the router at the retirement home where my in-laws live. But the manager didn't know how to get into it. So I googled that router and had the default username and password within a few minutes. He was quite astonished how easy it was for me to break into the system.

I would guess that at least 75% of routers and other online devices are installed without changing the password or username. That's great when you're trying to fix something for someone, but not great for security.

Most of these same devices run linux, but that really has nothing to do with it.
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trimthicket
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by trimthicket »

lesterb wrote:I would guess that at least 75% of routers and other online devices are installed without changing the password or username. That's great when you're trying to fix something for someone, but not great for security.
It's nice that most home internet wireless routers come with different passwords already set up. It's usually written on the side of the router. It wasn't long ago when you could find most networks completely unsecure to join them. Now, not so much.
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trimthicket
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by trimthicket »

lesterb wrote:I would guess that at least 75% of routers and other online devices are installed without changing the password or username. That's great when you're trying to fix something for someone, but not great for security.
It's nice that most home internet wireless routers come with different passwords already set up. It's usually written on the side of the router. It wasn't long ago when you could find most networks completely unsecure to join them. Now, not so much.
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lesterb
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by lesterb »

trimthicket wrote:
lesterb wrote:I would guess that at least 75% of routers and other online devices are installed without changing the password or username. That's great when you're trying to fix something for someone, but not great for security.
It's nice that most home internet wireless routers come with different passwords already set up. It's usually written on the side of the router. It wasn't long ago when you could find most networks completely unsecure to join them. Now, not so much.
Some do, some don't. I put in a new router for the same place I was talking about earlier. It was a brand name router, and a good one, but still used a default username/pwd combination available to anyone on Google.

We were just hooked up to our towns new fiber optic network yesterday. The installer put in a new router for us and I hooked my existing network to it. Username? User. PWD? cus20mer. Printed right in the booklet they gave to everyone. So now you can probably break into the networks of close to half the town of Stirling.

But not into mine, because I changed it. 8-)
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lesterb
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by lesterb »

I checked the D-Link router I put in several years ago, and it had a unique password on the label. I still changed it, but it would probably have been secure as it was.

All internet capable appliances should do likewise.
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lesterb
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by lesterb »

I needed something else to think about tonight, so I got back to running Linux on a live USB stick. I set it up a while ago, using YUMI, which lets you run multiple distros on one stick.

My problem was getting it to print. I set it up so that I could save changes to the stick, but my printer didn't have drivers on any of the linux distros I tried. I had found a cups driver earlier that was supposed to work, but had no luck installing it. Discovered tonight that you had to do it from the terminal as ROOT. Now it works great. Even supports two sided printing on my wireless network.

Some distros don't want to work on YUMI. It seems to have something to do with EUFI. When I installed it, I set it that it should boot either from Legacy or EUFI, but that doesn't seem to work. Only the legacy works and I suspect that is why I can't boot Fedora or OpenSuse. I guess I need to make separate sticks for each distro.

It's interesting how fast these live distros work, even though I haven't installed them on my hard drive or SSD. You'd hardly notice.
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Sudsy
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Re: Live USB drives

Post by Sudsy »

It is hard to believe that in my lifetime this kind of dialogue has evolved. Bet you folks didn't know you can speak in an unkonwn tongue. :lol:
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