On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Jack Bates wrote:
May I recommend developing an in house method for allowing the customer only
access to your servers (web, dns, proxy, etc), and then apply filters for
everything else except for tcp/80. If you wanted to be additionally paranoid,
you could even allow only established tcp/80 connections back to the
customer.
Once updated, customer could establish contact to have filters removed, or an
automated web process you be created.
It's a ton of work, and there are any number of ways to do it. A lot depends
on your network. It can be done, though.
I went down that road several times, and there are many issues with what
you have described which won't work for how Microsoft distributes its
updates and patches; and with the user. Microsoft has enabled Windows
with enough features, users can infect their machine with only TCP/80.
Please review the archives for details from several years ago, and at
some point you will end up needing to violate the written Microsoft
licenses.
Its not a technical problem (although engineers seem to like to think
everything is), its a legal issue with Microsoft's lawyer and licenses.