Echo Request and more!

[Wazz]

Hi everyone,

Just need some help to understand my firewall results. I have to say that I have been using zonealarm, the free version and had turned the alerts off and not really looked at the log of what was going on, until yesterday.
There were lots of echo requests and requests to connect to various ports. So I installed another firewall, Kerio personal firewall. This is picking up the same as zonealarm. My concern is I am getting echo requests, not just from my isp which is BT, I also get them from aol and ntl and im averaging 2 echo requests or requests to connect to ports every 3 seconds! To me this seems more than just internet noise!!

Please can someone give me some advice about what exactly my firewalls are picking up?

Thanks,

Chris

 

[JasonDeckard]

Wazz,

An echo request is the first half of a ping (someone is pinging your system). The connections to various ports are likely to be port scans or checks for specific daemon processes.

These are not things to lose sleep over; however, they are the reasons you need a firewall

Cheers,
Jason

 

[Wazz]

Jason,

Relating to the ping, I understand exactly what they are, its just the amount of them thats of concern. Im sure I only used to receive one every 5 mins or so.

how does this relate to everyone elses firewall log?

 

[ChicagoJim]

With the recent vulnerabilities disclosed (RPC DCOM primarily) and the resulting viruses and exploits, the Internet has become "noisier" than it typically is. I'm a sys admin, and I can tell you my Internet facing logs are filling MUCH faster than usual as a consequence.

I wouldn't worry about what your firewall is catching if it's not hurting your computer or network performance. I'm always more worried about what I'm NOT seeing in my log files!

On a side note, there was a denial of service attack discovered for Zone Alarm. So, make sure your running the latest version. However, from what you’re describing, it doesn't sound like anyone is hitting you with it.