4 ms·

> If anything, NAT has saved millions of wildly insecure devices running unpatched old Windows versions from getting pwned the second they connect to the open i

> If anything, NAT has saved millions of wildly insecure devices running unpatched old Windows versions from getting pwned the second they connect to the open internet. Its definitely the opposite. People started ignoring security because its "natted" anyways, even though NAT was never supposed to be security-critical. Thats what firewalls are for.

elric 1mo ago
People (by which I mean average computer users) didn't "start ignoring security", they never bothered to unignore it in the first place. Early Windows editions didn't even ship with a firewall at all, people were rawdogging the internet out of the box without ever stopping to consider the consequences.
- Hizonner 1mo ago
  ... because people (by which I mean software vendors who should have known better) irresponsibly failed to create secure systems for those average users to use. A whole lot of which came to be justified by "it'll be behind a firewall" thinking.
  - mhurron 1mo ago
    Did you forget dialup was a thing? No one created anything for home users thinking it would be behind some firewall because as said Windows didn't ship with one, and because the dominant way of customers getting online was dialup, giving a public IP to every user. Software was created with no security because no one demanded it because no one cared. Technologies that came later did not create that situation.
- combyn8tor 1mo ago
  I remember in the Windows 95/98 days asking my friend for his IP address and then browsing through my windows explorer to his mum's fully shared windows C drive. She had her computer plugged directly into the modem and was using ICS to share the net to my friends computer. I sent them a screenshot of her shared drive through ICQ, and not long after she bought a router.
icedchai 1mo ago
The typical NAT implementation ("PAT", single public IP, RFC-1918 network) gives you an implicit stateful firewall denying unsoliticed inbound traffic. Most people don't need anything else.

elric 1mo ago

People (by which I mean average computer users) didn't "start ignoring security", they never bothered to unignore it in the first place. Early Windows editions didn't even ship with a firewall at all, people were rawdogging the internet out of the box without ever stopping to consider the consequences.

Hizonner 1mo ago
... because people (by which I mean software vendors who should have known better) irresponsibly failed to create secure systems for those average users to use. A whole lot of which came to be justified by "it'll be behind a firewall" thinking.
- mhurron 1mo ago
  Did you forget dialup was a thing? No one created anything for home users thinking it would be behind some firewall because as said Windows didn't ship with one, and because the dominant way of customers getting online was dialup, giving a public IP to every user. Software was created with no security because no one demanded it because no one cared. Technologies that came later did not create that situation.
combyn8tor 1mo ago
I remember in the Windows 95/98 days asking my friend for his IP address and then browsing through my windows explorer to his mum's fully shared windows C drive. She had her computer plugged directly into the modem and was using ICS to share the net to my friends computer. I sent them a screenshot of her shared drive through ICQ, and not long after she bought a router.

icedchai 1mo ago

The typical NAT implementation ("PAT", single public IP, RFC-1918 network) gives you an implicit stateful firewall denying unsoliticed inbound traffic. Most people don't need anything else.