Network Risks
Your company's firewall adequately protects your desktop workstations from outside network attacks, but laptops are directly exposed to network attacks whenever employees use a modem to connect to the Internet. Laptops are also vulnerable when employees travel to a client's site and connect the laptop to the client's network. Malicious users know many methods (e.g., mapped drives, the Scheduler service, Telnet) of gaining entry into a Win2K or NT computer over a network. To protect laptops from such attacks, you need to lock down your standard laptop configuration by disabling all unnecessary services. For information about the risks of Win2K's native services, see my three-part "Dangerous Services" series listed in "Related Reading." You can adapt this information to the NT platform. I also strongly recommend that you consider implementing a personal firewall on your laptops.
NT lets you define port filtering, but because the OS can't distinguish incoming packets from outgoing packets, you'll probably find this functionality useless. Win2K's IP Security (IPSec) offers more flexible port filtering, which lets you provide good protection for your laptops from network attacks. Of course, you can always opt to purchase one of the many personal firewalls available from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). For more information about personal firewalls, see "Related Reading." . . .
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Interesting article, but it misses one point: Users don't shut down the laptop or even log off before leaving the office. They rather put the computer in standby or hibernation mode, in order to restore the desktop instantly at some temporary workplace (home, airport, train, etc.).<br>
Thus, the administrator cannot rely on policies such as clearing the pagefile on shutdown or updating virus signatures on logon. Those events simply don't happen very often.<br>
An attacker (e.g. a thief) would have to provide the user's or an administrator's password to wake up the machine. Evidently, the passwords are checked locally. Can they be easily cracked in that situation?<br>
Lars Staurset October 21, 2002