h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

1st I have a virus spoofing my email address. I have been deleting it from my bulkmail folder for about a week now, and suddenly i am getting mail undeliverd from email address i have never seen

2nd i keep getting port scanned, when my firewall traces it back to a server of my ISP, or for 3 occurances that happened to day, somewhere in luxemburg.

3rd after disabling my fire wall to play a game cos they wern't beign very nice to each other (they are working fine together now). My computer suddenly freezes and reboots). when i then reconnect to the internet, my firewall warns me second after connecting about ICMP. so from looking at website I would conclude from waht they say about ICMP beign used to attack computers as it can cause them to reboot.

is someone trying to attack my computer today? or is this just what everyone has to deal with daily nowadays?

You're not paranoid. Everybody really is out to get you.

Or, more specifically, it's the latter of your two theories. About 2 years ago I paid for Black Ice firewall, and it reported an intrusion attempt about every ten to fifteen minutes. It's about ten times worse these days, so I switched to Zone Alarm which doesn't automatically alert me every time.

If you've got a good firewall, properly set up, and a regular virus scanning strategy, you're at a lot less risk than most.

i have a McAfee Firewall. I had the Virus scanner fro about a year and after formatting and reintalling all, i installed my virsu scanner, then relised while looking at hte cd that it also contained a Firewall i didn't know i had.

the thing i find funny is that when i go onto the symnatec website to do there security check, i have to stop using my normal borwser (mozilla) and open IE so that it can try and attack me. I feel so much safer not using IE.

im gradually looking up what ports my differnt programs acrtully require and setting them up rather than allowing all or letting the firewall do it for me.


Also for some inexplicable reason after downloading JVM to run a program i have decided to learn Java, so im using the tutorial on the sunmicrosystems java website.


oh well if i keep at it i may be able to claim that i can at least get stuff to work using, VB, Delphi and Java.

1) get zonealarm, there is very little that is better and nothing that is free and better. Zonealarm has both free and payed for versions.

2) go to grc dot com and run the Shields Up test and any other tests. This will tell you how vulnerable you are and also give advice on how to prevent the problems. The best thing a firewall can do is refuse to respond on ports. Both BlackIce and McAffee have 'problems' with certain intrusion attempts. XZoneAlarm doesn't.

3) Go to lavasoftr and get AdAware, this will scan for and remove dubious cookies and, regisrtry entries and programs. Many of these are part of marketing trojans.

I'd say that zonalarm and adaware are prerequisites for internet use on a windows PC. And a visit to grc dot com is well worth the time.

oops, spolling musticks!

That'll be 'lavasoft' and 'zonealarm'

1)i did have zonealarm free version but i just got so ed off with it.

2)i will go havea look at this site now

3) i think i have adaware on a cd from a magazine, that or i will download it, i don't havge it at the moment because i formatted.

1)In what way did you get bleeped off with Zonealarm? I have been running it for several years now and have found it almost totally unobtrusive?

2) good!

3) Go to the lavasoft site, they have a new version out.

My ineptness at setting it up corretly to work with my programs.

then the half hour i had to wait for it to load at startup.



i am having problems disabling netbios. i attempted to before but im still getting warnings from websites that it is at risk.


lol, jsut rembered somethign i found funny while updating my machine after installing windows again. I had my virus scanenr installed and was using windows up date, annd while doing this my virus scanner stopped about 5 worms.

then later while still doing update to plug windows vunerabilites it said that you should disable your virus scanner while install these updates ....

adaware found all of 7 items. 1 registry key and 6 cookies.

1) get zonealarm, there is very little that is better and nothing that is free and better. Zonealarm has both free and payed for versions.

http://www.openbsd.org

But that's only if you have a spare computer and some patience.

i get the message about zonealarm, i just had a disagreement with it ... thats all.


might try that openBSD when i have a go at linux ...




i kinda sorted the net bios, instead of being open it is now closed, stealth would be prefered. now i only have to other ports open, 135 and 1025.

Well yes, there is BSD but isn't much help in securing a windows box unless you use it as a firewall.

You'd be stealthed on all ports if you had zonealarm, dunno why you had such probs with it, it never takes more than a few seconds to load on mine.

Adaware, that's good, shows you've been a good bouy and kept your computer fairly secure!

Port 135 is DCOM I believe. If you look on the grc site there is a program called the 'DCOMbobulator' which will a) tell you if you have a problem with DCOM and b) once you have downloaded the MS patch it will let you completely disable DCOM on your machine because I very much doubt you need it!

i can't close DCOM, the program not working.




i didn't realise that i was floating in the middle of the sea with nothing but water around me.

that's quite a good typo actually!


Ah well, best thing is to get whatever firewall you are using to close port 135.

OpenBSD will only help secure Windows machines if it's used as an external firewall, no doubt about that.

OpenBSD is an operating system, like Linux. Wasn't sure if you were clear on that. It's similar in a lot of ways but it's the small differences that you notice. Myself, I like OpenBSD better than any of the Linux distributions I've tried.