personal firewalls

Brooke · 06-25-2002, 11:48 AM

Hey folks, well considering how much I'm online and how buggy my laptop got, I installed McAfee's personal firewall, in addition to their virus scan program I had previously.

Can one or some of you computer nerds, I mean gurus, please explain what it means when someone is attempting a connection with my computer? How is this different from cookies? Today alone, there have been about 5 different attempts to connect to one of my ports. This is scary...but I don't really understand what it means.

Thanks-
Brooke

Sand Reef · 06-25-2002, 02:34 PM

I wouldn't worry. Unless you're getting pinged repeatedly from one particular IP address, then it's nothing to worry about. Your very own ISP pings your computer as well as websites, programs, etc. Open ports are not necessarily a bad thing. With your firewall it should close them all off anyways, and you have an anti virus program to watch any virus like activity in case something does slip by, which it can(has happened to me). You can shut off the auto alert so you won't get those messages every few minutes. hope that helps.

v

GSM · 06-25-2002, 02:45 PM

Basically, people out there will run "port scans"- a type of search looking for computers with vulnerabilities to exploit. If your firewall is set up correctly, you *should* have nothing to worry about from these scans.

If you can give more detail about what messages McAfee is giving you, I can tell you what they mean...

In the meantime, go here, and do both the "test my shields" and "probe my ports" (dirty huh) tests.

asmith · 06-25-2002, 04:17 PM

As said above, most of the "attempts" are just your ISP pinging your computer. This usually means that your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is checking to see if your computer is still there. Zone Alarm reports about 100 attempts per day for my PC. Most of them are from my ISP.

A good firewall will help keep people from hacking in. However, a firewall won't prevent you from downloading a virus. A good antivirus program such as Mcafee or Norton will help a lot. I run the free version of Zone Alarm as a software firewall. I ran the tests mentioned above and passed all of them. I run McAfee Antivirus on my computer and have never had a virus infect my computer (knock on wood).

Andrew

Rick O · 06-25-2002, 05:59 PM

I got a virus last week despite having the latest version of Norton Anti Virus (NAV), Norton Internet Security (NIS) and having recently installed updates. My computer became extremely sluggish. The first thing I thought of was that I had a virus so I tried to run a scan and NAV had been de-activated by the virus. Symantec (Norton) offers a free online scan so I ran it. It located and identified the virus but doesn't repair them. The first thing the virus did was to knock out NAV so it would be free to spread itself throughout my computer. I tried to un-install NAV but the virus wouldn't permit that either. Finally I downloaded some software from Symantec that nuked NAV off my computer. Then I reloaded NAV and cleaned the virus from the files. The strange thing is that my version of NAV couldn't locate the virus on my computer. When I specifically told it which files to check it found and cleaned the virus. I must say that Symantec's website is extremely thorough.

Just a piece of advice: If you get any unusual e-mails from friends that have attachments then don't open the attachment unless you're sure the sender intentionally sent them. That's how most viruses are spread.

Brooke · 06-25-2002, 06:29 PM

Thanks everyone. I will probably keep the firewall on my computer then. One day I was shutting down my computer and it said one user was connected. Not sure if I was "hacked" or not?!? I also had a few viruses despite having the McAfee virus scan going as well. I never download attachments, but I guess these things have their ways of getting in. This past weekend I cleaned up the computer and set it back to factory settings. That cleared up all the bugs. Of course, it isn't a super practical way to do it...but my comp is backed up on Jon's. Now I just have to get everything back...hopefully sans bugs.

Brooke

Rick O · 06-25-2002, 09:20 PM

I would definately keep the firewall. Without it a savy hacker can invade your computer while you're online. Viruses don't neccessarily have to come in the way of an attachment. Ever get any junk e-mail (other than mine

)?

Sand Reef · 06-25-2002, 09:38 PM

Brooke. I have had that happen to me once. I had set my C: drive to share without a password for full access(dont ask why

) . The drive was available to all the network and the world. I too found a user connected to my computer. I had 3 different viruses that spread to over 7,000 files and the other computer it was linked to. I think if someone was connected to your computer you may have gotten a virus by now. There shouldn't be anybody connected unless you allow them or they can see you on the net.

Go to www.symantec.com and have them scan your drives over the internet. I prefer Norton over McAfee, and they also provide tools to remove certain viruses that cannot be removed by the program itself.

v

reefer_wannabe · 06-30-2002, 01:34 AM

Thanks for this post. It reminded me to re-install my Zone Alarm firewall, since I had'nt from my last "incident"

Now to devise a way to keep the teenage son away from the 'puter and keep him offline for awhile................ I hate nasty surprises when I turn this thing on........

balakoth · 07-06-2002, 06:05 PM

FYI, if you run Windows 2000 Server / Advanced / XP / NT most of your ports are stealth blocked anyways. Most of the newer Windows OS took the liberty (About **** time) to incorperate general firewall security.

Windows 98 users or below I would definately recomend some form of personal firewall. I use to use Nortons, until I developed a small version of my own for port blocking and various other things I am very prone to.