OT: Is There A Hacker Convention Going On?

Atrocities · #1 January 25th, 2005, 02:33 PM

In the last hour my firewall has recorded over 500 unsolicited attempts to penetrate my system and the number is growing incredibly fast. Now 584.

Timstone · #2 January 25th, 2005, 02:39 PM

My goodness, that's a lot of attempts. Fortunately your Firewall holds them off. Pray you won't be penetrated (excuse the pun...).

Atrocities · #3 January 25th, 2005, 02:42 PM

I agree, I do hope the Fire wall holds. I might just disconnect and report the attack to my ISP with a list of the IP's has listed. I have heard of things like this happening, where massive attacks occure. Usually around some significan hacker holiday or something. I guess they are just picking on Qwest customers today.

I sincerely doubt it is a personal attack.

Timstone · #4 January 25th, 2005, 03:28 PM

Hmm... you doubt it's a personal attack?
Well, I could imagine you being the target of thousands and thousands of hackers... hehehe...

Blue Lord · #5 January 25th, 2005, 03:33 PM

I take it you lack a router?

Timstone · #6 January 25th, 2005, 03:36 PM

I don't know how it works, but I know the router is a physical barrier against viriea. Though the router isn't a full protection against outside trouble. I have a router (so does a friend of mine) and we regularly have encountered a hacker or virus inside the network (past the router).

Thermodyne · #7 January 25th, 2005, 03:43 PM

There are a couple of new worms making the rounds today. I was getting too many alerts from the firewall. My mail box kept filling up, had to turn the alerts off.

Thermodyne · #8 January 25th, 2005, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Timstone said:
I don't know how it works, but I know the router is a physical barrier against viriea. Though the router isn't a full protection against outside trouble. I have a router (so does a friend of mine) and we regularly have encountered a hacker or virus inside the network (past the router).

That would be worms. The worms use ports and or protos that can be blocked by the firewall.

Virus files are filtered by Antivirus software based on bit count/headers/etc. Some high end firewalls can also run antivirus. But I never saw a home-use nat/router/firewall that could do anything with virus files and still allow normal traffic.

Timstone · #9 January 25th, 2005, 04:11 PM

Thermodyne:
Ehhh... what do you mean? I fear I'm hopelessly outclassed by your knowledge about this kind of stuff. I yield.

Edit:
I just repeated what I was told, or better yet, made to believe.

Blue Lord · #10 January 25th, 2005, 04:33 PM

The router will, unless told otherwise, stop your ports from responding to pings. Someone pings your IP, worst case, the recieve "Port open to connections". As far as computer security goes, it goes downhill from there. Second worst case it responds with "Port's here, but closed". Best case, unless you did something to prompt the ping or have a specific port set to accept connection, it doesn't respond at all.

Which means the hacker in question might aswell be throwing packets at a computer that's turned off.

Add a firewall and a paranoid mind and you're safe as can be, short of *shudder* get rid of your modem.