Re: What can old sparc be used for?

"Greg Fisher" <> wrote in message
news:uIZIa.9$...
> I've seen on ebay old sparcs such as the 4,5,10,20's going for the same
> price as video games.
>
> Just wondering what these old machines could be utilised for?
>
> Hows the sound quaility, could they be used as a streaming mp3 server?
> Hows the graphics quality, I have several CD's full of satellite images,
> could a sparc be used as a kiosk type viewer. These images are mainly in
> tiff format and are around 150mb in size. Will the cpu be able to handle
say
> using gimp?
>

My SS20 is running as a NAT router, firewall, DNS cache, NTP server and mail
hub. To make it harder to the crackers, it's running Linux.

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio @ iki fi

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:06:31 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:

> To make it harder to the crackers, it's running Linux.

That is the best joke I've seen today, thanks.

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Dave Uhring wrote:

> On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:06:31 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:
>
> > To make it harder to the crackers, it's running Linux.
>
> That is the best joke I've seen today, thanks.

It made me chuckle too! :-)

--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA

President,
Rite Online Inc.

Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-online.net

"Rich Teer" <> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.44.0306241047280.245-...
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Dave Uhring wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:06:31 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:
> >
> > > To make it harder to the crackers, it's running Linux.
> >
> > That is the best joke I've seen today, thanks.
>
> It made me chuckle too! :-)
>

It's not a joke...

On the first night it was on the ADSL line, somebody noticed that there's
Linux running and tried the then-current lpd exploit. It got in and got one
of the CPU's belly up - it was totally confused of the 80x86 code virus.

Of course, the cracker did not achieve anything else.

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio @ iki fi

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:32:46 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:

> It's not a joke...
>
> On the first night it was on the ADSL line, somebody noticed that there's
> Linux running and tried the then-current lpd exploit. It got in and got one
> of the CPU's belly up - it was totally confused of the 80x86 code virus.

Keep up the practice and you can have a second career as a stand-up
comedian.

Unless you turn off -all- services Linux is just as insecure as Windows.
You might look into installing Solaris with a minimal install along with
ipfilter -or- install OpenBSD on such a machine.

Running services on a firewall box is nothing short of inept foolishness
in the first place.

> Of course, the cracker did not achieve anything else.

Shutting down part of your system is not significant?

Dave Uhring <> writes:

> On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:06:31 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:
>
> > To make it harder to the crackers, it's running Linux.
>
> That is the best joke I've seen today, thanks.

Why, do you know of an easy way for a cracker to discern
that a linux host is running on sparc instead of x86?
Or are you under the impression that an x86 buffer
overflow exploit would also work on Sparc?

-SEan

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:57:04 +0000, Sean Burke wrote:

> Why, do you know of an easy way for a cracker to discern
> that a linux host is running on sparc instead of x86?
> Or are you under the impression that an x86 buffer
> overflow exploit would also work on Sparc?

Had you read Tauno's reply you would have seen that an effective DoS was
accomplished via the lpd 'sploit.

Dave Uhring <> writes:

> On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:57:04 +0000, Sean Burke wrote:
>
> > Why, do you know of an easy way for a cracker to discern
> > that a linux host is running on sparc instead of x86?
> > Or are you under the impression that an x86 buffer
> > overflow exploit would also work on Sparc?
>
> Had you read Tauno's reply you would have seen that an effective DoS was
> accomplished via the lpd 'sploit.

Yes, and I also saw that he didn't get rooted, as he would
have been had the attacker guessed his processor correctly.

I run a Solaris/Sparc web/mail/ftp/DNS server, and guess
what - the same Apache/Sendmail/Bind/OpenSSH vulnerabilities
that affect Linux, affect my Solaris box too.

So I guess I'm just missing the reason why you are amused.

-SEan

"Sean Burke" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Dave Uhring <> writes:
>
> > On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:57:04 +0000, Sean Burke wrote:
> >
> > > Why, do you know of an easy way for a cracker to discern
> > > that a linux host is running on sparc instead of x86?
> > > Or are you under the impression that an x86 buffer
> > > overflow exploit would also work on Sparc?
> >
> > Had you read Tauno's reply you would have seen that an effective DoS was
> > accomplished via the lpd 'sploit.
>
> Yes, and I also saw that he didn't get rooted, as he would
> have been had the attacker guessed his processor correctly.
>
> I run a Solaris/Sparc web/mail/ftp/DNS server, and guess
> what - the same Apache/Sendmail/Bind/OpenSSH vulnerabilities
> that affect Linux, affect my Solaris box too.
>
> So I guess I'm just missing the reason why you are amused.
>
> -SEan
>

Thanks, Sean.

That was my point. Needless to say that the services were shut down the
following day - and the firewall buttoned up. The incident happened on the
first test run of the new set-up with nothing connected on the inside yet.

Dave, I'm not as green as you seem to think - wrote my first piece of code
in June 1964.

Tauno
tauno voipio @ iki fi

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 14:58:16 +0000, Tauno Voipio wrote:

> Dave, I'm not as green as you seem to think - wrote my first piece of code
> in June 1964.

You beat me by one year ;-)