So much for network security

B

Thread Starter

Bob Peterson

I hooked up an out of the box WinNT 4.0 system to a customer's network, and then attempted to go to the microsoft web site to download service pack 6.

Amazingly, it let me go there and download the service pack w/o requiring me to logon to the local network. It would not let me go anywhere else that I tried on the web, just www.microsoft.com. When I would try other web sites it would ask me for a username and password.

The IS guy got a kick out of this, and has no idea why this works.

Bob Peterson
 
A

Alex Pavloff

Then you need a new IS person.

You don't always needs to log onto a local network to get access to the internet. Browsing the web, in most cases, has nothing to do with
authenticating to the local network. (All you need is an IP address, subnet mask, DNS servers, and a gateway, and you're off.)

If you're using a proxy server you can put access controls and other blocks in place. I suspect in this case that you were using a proxy server, and in fact, that it was configured to allow access to
microsoft.com without a username/password.

Alex Pavloff
Software Engineer
Eason Technology
 
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