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The first one: Depends on how well the system is protected. A standard XP is easy to get control over. But you really should update such a system
The second one: I've never tried a Linux distro without firewall enabled. The only embarassing linux distros are the Linspire like systems.
Again: Come forth with links to information about these embarrasing situations, and the names of all the many (non-existent) linux distributions shipped with all kind of services turned on and no firewall.
Come on. 6 years ago firewall was standard in all major linux distributions and many smaller ones as well.
I've never hard of a linux system without a firewall. It would be insane (besides that a firewall isn't really needed on linux in the same way as on Windows - unless you are running web services of course).
"I've never hard of a linux system without a firewall. It would be insane (besides that a firewall isn't really needed on linux in the same way as on Windows - unless you are running web services of course)."
They had firewall capability, sure. But out of the box, they were not turned on.
And 6 years ago, firewalls were *MUCH MORE* necessary on Linux than on Windows. Because out of the box, the typical Linux system 6 years ago had telnetd, sshd, sendmail, ftpd, rpc services, and any number of other exploitable services enabled by default.






Member since:
"Cracking a Windows box to get administrator privileges is so easy people don't want to believe it."
I bet you can't do it.
And let's not forget that a lot of this is based on historical problems with Windows. And if you want to compare history, well, Linux has a rather embarassing history itself. It wasn't that long ago that most Linux distros had tons of services enabled by default with no firewalls, and the average Linux out of the box install could be rooted in about 5 to 10 minutes by someone who knew what they were doing.