Re: A Better Solution to the RHN Bandwidth Problem

["Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:49 AM 4/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-04-11 at 10:31, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> > I should also note that you have only mentioned cost-related issues, which
> > are independent from "security consciousness". Given that the BitTorrent
> > code is Open Source, and can/has been freely audited by lots of people,
> > then I should expect that an RH-sponsored BitTorrent would not pose any
> > significant security risks to the consumer.
>
> Opening any more ports than I hvae to is a security risk, regardless of
> whether or not that port is used by "audited" code.

An excellent and valid point which I neglected to mention, and a perfectly 
valid reason for you to choose not to use an RH/BT download channel if it 
is offered to you. Still doesn't make it a bad idea for other users, 
though. <grin>

By the way, what I've done for this kind of thing is leave a single 
P200/64MB box (ancient desktop) in my DMZ. This is the box which I use for 
BT-type stuff, and a couple of ports are forwarded to it from the firewall, 
and it is ENTIRELY blocked off from the rest of my network, with the 
exception that only I am allowed to SSH into it. So, AFAIAC, it's even 
lower-risk than my dns/smtp/http servers. <smile>


--
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx