For the most part, Chris has it right: your home workstation is somewhat less of a target than a web server. Both may be sitting on the big, bad, internet, but the webserver is advertising its presence: otherwise, its not doing much good serving web pages to people who can’t find it 😉 If you want to run a webserver in your home, you had better at least know the basics of security and OS administration.

A properly configured firewall for your workstation can make your home PC completely invisible: even if someone knows your IP address, they can’t get at your machine unless you install something on your machine first that lets them. That’s where all those trojan applications and such come in: they “call home” to the bad guy, giving him a way in because the user knowingly or unknowingly opened the door first.

Case in point: I installed a super-simple firewall and AV software on my Mom’s computer and directly attached her to the Internet a few years ago. My Mom is in her 80’s, so she’s definitely not keeping up with the latest worms or cracker exploits. All she does is keep her Antivirus software up to date, and ask my nephew or I when something weird happens on her computer (not often). After three years, her machine is still worm and virus free.

My webserver, on the other hand, can’t be *completely* blocked via a firewall- folks have to be able to initiate a web session, so at least port 80 has to be open. And then there is the software that serves those web pages: in the case of my server, PHPNuke and WordPress. WordPress is well-written, and doesn’t have obvious holes. PHPNuke is poorly written, and has a *lot* of obvious holes. Unfortunately, I have sites using PHPNuke that would be more hassle to migrate than I want to invest.

My server has nothing confidential on it, nor can it be used as a gateway to my work stuff. But it still bugs me that I have to periodically fix the mess the script kiddies leave behind. Sort of like having a nice front yard, and every once in a while the neighborhood thugs smash the flowers and knock over the garden gnomes…it is a “violation” and a bit frustrating, but nothing serious.

That said, every once in a while I’d like to plant explosives in the flower bed and give my garden gnomes flame throwers…