Hi,

I recently re0instralled and update ubuntu 10.04 LTS. After installing and running debsecan, I found ALOT of problems. Does anyone have experiance with this tool?

After reading your post I ran debsecan on my Ubuntu 10.04 machine. It listed many vulnerabilities. I find that very disappointing.

My response is to:
- use a gateway/router with a firewall and to use a firewall on the machine
- avoid downloading material such as pictures, PDF files, and other exploitable material
- use a dedicated user account for recreational use and another user account for personal stuff
- harden the file system security on my machine
- and other stuff.

The list of vulnerabilities listed in debsecan is troubling. The question is whether any other operating system provides better security. Some claim to do that such as OpenBSD but I'm not convinced.

The sad fact is that if you want to use exploitable software such as streaming audio players and PDF viewers and Java applications then the best approach is to try to limit the extent that these problems can cause harm. I believe that Linux is good at doing that but I feel like I'm just whistling past a graveyard.

not sure what the graveyard analogy refers to. However, the odd thing is that if you look at the debian security listings, you will see that many of these have been patched. What I couldnt make sense of was the versions of packages.
I had thought that ubuntu pulled updates from the debian patches as well. Am I wrong?