Broad Band Question 3

[itsgenekramer]

Okay. I finally broke down and rocketed myself into the 21st century by installing broad band at home. A few questions: I'm using Windows XP Home and have my firewall enabled in my ethernet connection. I'm running NAV with updated dat files. I run spybot S & D, AdAware, CW Shredder on a fairly regular basis. My home PC really doeesn't contain any "sensitive" information should it get hacked into. Should I be concerned about getting hacked and what, if any, suggestions can you make about the security of my system.

Thanks so much.

 

[jrbarnett]

Hi

The windows XP firewall only hides your PC from the outside world, it doesn't attempt to authenticate outgoing connections like many of the personal firewall products available today.
Therefore, I would suggest going for one of the free for personal use firewalls such as Kerio instead of the built in one, and assuming you keep the dats up to date and are careful about running email attachments you should be OK.

John

 

[2ffat]

In addition, I would worry about being hacked. If someone were to gain access to your machine, they could turn it in a spambot or worse, a "virusbot", sending spam and virii to any address/mailbox it can come up with.

Your broadband connect would soon slow down to slower that a dial-up, you would be getting the blame for sending spam or virii, programs on your machine would crash, and your broadband address could get blacklisted. Follow jrbarnett's advice.



James P. Cottingham

^{There's no place like 127.0.0.1.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1.}

 

[itsgenekramer]

Thank you both for your input. I downloaded and installed Kerio Firewall 4.

 

[AlexIT]

While these are great suggestions, I would spring for a 49USD Dlink/Linksys Broadband router/firewall/NAT device too...

Alex

 

[itsgenekramer]

AlexIT - What would that do?

 

[AlexIT]

Most broadband routers contain a hardware firewall which works with the NAT function to isolate you PC from the internet. If you pay more you get more, the ones I recommend are stateful inspection devices that look at each packet and check if your PC has ASKED for it. They will not permit any incoming traffic unless it is in specific response to a request from your PC.

Running software on your PC is great and products like Zonealarm will tell you what software is trying to access the internet, and alert you to any incoming packets that it thinks are attacks. But this is still software on your PC...any of these can get damaged by installing another program, some viruses actually recognize the software firewalls and can turn them off!

Use the Kerio for a month or two and check the logs (remember only traffic it blocked is logged, traffic it missed never shows up.) After that time buy the router and put it in, now check the logs for a while...see if its worth the 50USD (the logs will probably show NO traffic but internal software requests, if the router is doing its job.)

Alex

 

[jrbarnett]

AlexIT

Hardware firewalls don't stop malware on your PC from connecting out to contact home, or similar. This is the limitation in any non software firewall.

John

 

[AlexIT]

John, what you post is exactly true!

"Running software on your PC is great and products like Zonealarm will tell you what software is trying to access the internet"

For incoming traffic a non-software solution, which cannot be accidentally turned off, isolates a PC better than software on the PC.

You still need to keep track of outgoing requests...I recommend BOTH, not just hardware.

Alex

 

[wmccall]

The trouble with many software firewall software for the average not techie user is they messages whether to allow a particular software internet access or not. 99% of the time they are not going to know the right answer.

Many users will unknowingly allow the spyware/adware that comes along with some cute software full acess.

 

[stech1]

Two additional suggestions:

1. If you are concerned about being hacked, you need to make sure that you have antivirus on your machine to protect you from trojan horses.

2. Something that we have started to recommend is that users unplug the ethernet cable from the back of the modem when you are not using the internet. This will protect you %100 from any threats on the internet. When you are ready to go back surfing, just plug it back in and away you go. This may not be a good solution for you if the modem is not located near your PC or if it is way under your desk and hard to get to.

As a general rule, there are four thing you can do to protect yourself on the internet:

Antivirus
Windows Updates
Firewall
Anti-spyware

For now on, there will always be risks associated with the internet, but if you take care of the four items above, you will make yourself as hard a target as possible