Their old Windows 2000 server was on the net 24/7 via a 768k DSL connection. It didn't have any of the MS patches or service packs. I am surprised that it was not hacked with all those Win 2K vulnerabilities out there. Their DSL modem (Speedstream) supposedly has a built-in firewall but the default rules is to let everything in so it wasn't much good. I will configure it to let in only HTTP, SMTP, POP and SSH. That will provide an additional layer of security. Not sure how useful it is though.
I have been using a Debian Linux system at home to share my cable modem connection for several years. I run apt-get & logcheck on it and I will be doing the same for them. I am on the debian-security-announce list so I should be able to stay on top of things as far as Debian security updates are concerned.
Funny ... when I first mentioned Linux, their first though was Redhat. To them, Redhat was synonymous with Linux :-) I had to spend a few minutes educating them that there is more to Linux than Redhat.
At home the biggest intrusion attempts I get are fools trying to connect to the NetBIOS and HTTP ports. Lately I have been seeing an increase in activity on port 445. I found out from a Google search that port 445 is yet another Windows hole being exploited.
For the hardware, all the systems I saw yesterday are extreme overkill for a server running only Apache. I didn't see any SCSI drives so I will use a pair of IDE drives configured for RAID-1.
later jmb
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