You think too little of people, DG. I used S2K3 Server for a while on a gaming machine. It was the most stable platform I could find at the time.
That said, networks are constantly being scanned for vulnerable vectors. If you’re running a web server from that system, you could very easily be hacked if your firewall NATs to 80/443. My firewall logs are full of attempts against 80/443/3389 from China, Russia, Brazil, etc. They’re always watching for a way in.
The Server OSes are terrific personal machines, if you can afford the license. I used both 2K and 2K3 that way, years ago, on an MSDN while developing. I didn't intend to disparage anybody really.
> That said, networks are constantly being scanned for vulnerable vectors. If you’re running a web server from that system, you could very easily be hacked if your firewall NATs to 80/443. My firewall logs are full of attempts against 80/443/3389 from China, Russia, Brazil, etc. They’re always watching for a way in.
Yeah, I always move SSh away from 22 for the same reason. Hard to climb around in the logs when they're filled with crap.
One small place I worked, when I joined up, first thing I discovered was the firewall had a hole on 3389 to the CEO's desktop. He liked to access it from home without having to do anything special, so he'd told the previous Sysadmin to do it or get fired (the guy quit soon after). I flipped out (quietly) and set up a VPN with a passphraseless key for cert auth, and the CEO was okay with that. [shudder]