For those of you who have 'always on' internet connections

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

I brought a computer home last night to redo because it was badly corrupted-- when we did the first virus scan, it had a grand total of 31 distinct virii. It was most likely caused by the email server, plus the fact he had an out of date edition of an antivirus program (didn't matter-- the virus attack had detected it and broken it into little pieces.). And he had no firewall. Although he had installed Norton Internet Security, it had been put on after his machine was infected, thus it never worked at all.

The most amazing thing to me was, while backing up his files prior to deleting the partition, I discovered a hidden folder deep in his Windows directory-- it had been given a file name to disguise it. In it were 7gb of pirate cd warez. His machine had been turned into an open FTP server by some anonymous hacker, and was serving the planet! The only thing I kept thinking was "Thank heavens it wasn't someone's stash of kiddie porn!" Now the man is worried because all his company's financial files were exposed to whoever knew his IP address.

The moral is, of course, FIREWALL FIREWALL FIREWALL and VIRUS SCAN. "Often."

On edit: The greatest irony was, one of the warez cds found on his hard drive was the new Norton Antivirus 2004, just released about 3 weeks ago...

[Bozola]

1. make that....

HARDWARE firewall, HARDWARE firewall, HARDWARE firewall...

Software firewalls are for sucks.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. Ayefirmative

;-)

[Wwagsthedog]

5. Any suggestions?

n/t

[Atlant]

11. Make that DEDICATED firewall and I'll agree with you.

There really isn't any such thing as a "HARDWARE firewall";
even your Linksys (or what-have-you) is running firmware.

The point is to have a gateway system that is dedicated to
just serving as your firewall and is running quality software/
firmware. And then open no incoming ports unless you know what
you're doing.

Atlant

[Wwagsthedog]

3. Thanks for the tip

What is your opinion of Zone Alarm and AVG? Are they potent enough for good protection?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

7. Zone Alarm is getting better

I keep a copy of version 3.71 on mine (as part of my protection, not all of it...) and I have no complaints.

Never used AVG myself, so I can't say yea or nay about it.

[Wwagsthedog]

10. Thanks for the version info for Zonealarm

My copy was way out of date. I just upgraded to v3.7.211.0, dated 9/4/03.

[Girlfriday]

4. You're scaring me

I don't have a fire wall!

[brainshrub]

6. Zonealarm

I use Zonealarm.com Effective, free. Great product. I liked it so much I bought the full version.

[Braden]

12. another vote for Zonealarm

my four year old can operate it. once its on your very well protected.

[brainshrub]

8. Levels of security

I use a Linux server, a firewall, and anti-virus software updated once a day.
I do find a bug from time to time...but I catch the little wankers early.

I once let my virus-software lapse a few months, when I updated, I had over 40 viruses!!!

[Ivory_Tower]

9. Agreed

I have hardware AND software firewalls at home (pants and suspenders, I guess).

A few years ago someone at work put an open FTP server on a machine so a customer could transfer some files, and he never told us (this was pre-firewall days). A few months later our network slowed to a crawl. I got a packet sniffer and found the FTP server -- someone got in (easy since the anonymous account was open) and loaded 1GB of music files on it, and was in the process of loading porn (created directories but hadn't loaded files yet). People were downloading in several U.S. cities, as well as China, England, and Germany. We shut it down and buttoned up the network pretty quickly after that, although it was tempting to replace the contents of every music file on the server with "Oops, I Did It Again" and then re-open the server. :evilgrin: