[pavs]

umm no.

He specifically mentions that all the softwares are vulnerable:

"Its developers have spent hours stuffing it with broken, ill-configured, outdated, and exploitable software that makes it vulnerable to attacks."

Just replace them with the latest, patched, default configured version.

[btilly]

What pieces of software do you replace? How do you replace it? Remember that it likely doesn't some with anything like apt to make this easy.

[kaens]

You wipe the disk and install OpenBSD.

[mahmud]

Good idea, but completely beside the point.

[davidw]

Why sit around replacing packages by hand when you're not really learning anything? The best fix for a system like this is to nuke it from orbit and reinstall. I mean, odds are, you'll miss something, and then spent hours fooling around after getting hacked, when you could have just spent your time concentrating on what's important: saving relevant data and configuration, reinstalling, and securing the updated configuration.

[rick_2047]

This is a course in security and thats why the comment is completely beside the point.

[davidw]

The important point, which I did miss, is that it's not just a "security course", it's a course about how to break into things, so you need vulnerable programs. If you're not specializing in security stuff, the best course of action, is, however, to just keep your stuff up to date via apt or some similar mechanism.

[zachrose]

Or you could just get an iPad.