From the article: a worm, especially for software as widely
implemented as Apache or OpenSSH, would be devastating: the results would be as dramatic as any
other security problem we've seen to date, and could be a lot worse, especially if the worm was designed
to destroy data.


Only if you're a complete dumbass and run Apache as the same user that can overwrite or delete your webpages. I don't, all a web browser needs to do is READ the pages. For temporary storage or server created stuff, just use a separate directory that the webserver can write to.

Secondly, it's very rare IMHO that an SSH port needs to be open to the world. Only allow the few networks that you would need/like to allow, firewall SSH off to the majority. Use a VPN solution if you've got lots of roaming remote users.

Come on, this column is sounding a bit too hysterical already.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/96/14409#14409