News from PANUG -  January 25, 2001
http://www.panug.org

MICROSOFT'S MISCONFIGURATION
Yesterday's email broadcast hinted that Microsoft's outage,
that lasted more than one day, may have been the result of
an attack. Well, it wasn't an attack. It's worse. It was the
handiwork of Microsoft technicians who misconfigured a
router to filter out DNS traffic.

This is an easy mistake to make but it's one that can
normally be fixed in a few minutes. The Microsoft technicians
took more than a day to fix it - which may be some sort of
record :-). This might give you the idea that firewalls are
difficult to configure. They're not. Many firewalls can be
reconfigured in a few minutes.

The most difficult part of configuring a firewall is knowing
what you want to do. You need to have some knowledge of
protocols so you can write the rules. How do you learn this
stuff?

PANUG can help. In February, PANUG is hosting a one-day
class on firewalls so you too can configure you own
firewall - in far less time than it takes Microsoft.


MASTERING FIREWALLS
On February 27, PANUG is hosting a Mastering Firewalls
course that will be held at Novell's office in Tigard.
You can get details from PANUG's web site at
http://www.panug.org


DNS BOOT CAMP
PANUG is once again hosting the DNS Boot Camp that has
been offered twice before. This one-day class will be held
on February 26 at Novell's office. You can get details at
PANUG's web site at http://www.panug.org

This course has been updated to include djbdns and the
DNS server in Windows 2000. The djbdns software is
especially interesting because it solves the security
problems that occassionally pop up in BIND. PANUG members
earn a discount for attending this course.

If you've attended this course in the past and you'd like
to attend it again for the new material, you may attend for
half price.

If you attended the course before and you'd like an updated
workbook, these will be available by or before February 25.


WRITERS WANTED
You've probably noticed that much of the stuff published on
PANUG's list comes from the same people. You're invited to
contribute as well so we can all benefit from a wider view
of the networking world. If you know stuff and are willing
to share that knowledge but you're not a writer, send us
your text and we can turn it into prose. You'll have an
opportunity to review it before it is published.