Hi Dave,

I certainly stand by the advice I gave here. This post is now over a year old. How many SOHO Mac users were hacked because of following this advice? Security is all about balancing risk and convenience. Unfortunately it is generally true that more convenience gives less security. SMABA attacks are limited to the LAN, so saying that you are probably OK if you trust everyone else on your network is reasonable.

As for home routers, if you read more on this site you'll see that I have dedicated quite a bit of time to explaining to people why it is important to secure their home routers. It is also true that NAT offers great protection from the outside by its one-way-valve nature.

I almost agree with your last statement, I just think you left out a word. What I'd say is "The fact that you have a firewall is no excuse for NEEDLESSLY running software on your network with security vulnerabilities!". When there are no patches you are left with a judgement where you have to weigh up the risks of running the software against the inconvenience of not running it.

Right now the entire world is using a fundamentally flawed version of DNS. We have the solution, DNSSEC, but to deploy it would be a truly Herculean task. Hence we potter along with a crudely patched DNS implementation for now. That's the real world. Perfect security is almost never a viable option.

Bart.