I almost feel like we should have a paranoia section in this BBS

[oblivion]

Do not you?
I am not saying that I am not paranoid,but it seems like people here are overly paranoid about viruses and hackers..........................I do not think I have ever seen so many people use firewalls in my life.

I used to use conseal firewall,it is one of the best,but it is not really worth it to me,I just use good judgement (and DUmeter to see if I have any incoming traffic) and do not keep vital info on my comp.

[Warthog]

I agree. I know what a firewall is (pretty much) but have no idea how to get one and why it is so very much important.

Warthog

[FrozenLiquidity]

Yes, a Paranoia section would be a great place where YOU could post all of your topics!!! http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Seriously I think that you are right, people are way too paranoid about Viruses and CRACKERS (not Hackers)

More on Hackers and Crackers later.

Frozen http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by FrozenLiquidity (edited 05-05-2000).]

[yaroa]

You know what else I see here a lot?: "I do not keep vital information on my computer".
Well what is the use of having a computer, if you cant take advantage of all the conveniences that it offers,I.e.,e Online Banking, Bill Pay, Shopping, etc.
I agree with you that the best defense is common sense, although the peace of mind that you get with some extra protection, is worthwhile.

[Gene C.]

simple answer. if you are only going to walk on the sidewalk. you don't need a safty seat belt.
but, if you are going to go out on the highway you need one. it all depends on where you like to play or care to wonder off to. I stay outside the u.s. alot. and I need a safety belt. and if you use your system for business. besides playing on it. you need the added safty.
unless you are going to stop. change systems and than do business. what a waste of time. and time is money on somethings ect. and I would like to see all the things that would happen if all us people with home network setups didn't have a firewall.
fire walls are made to be used only if you think you need them. and a waste of hdd space if you don't. just like virus programs programs.
and I can send you to some sites. and if you don't have a virus program. you will be back here crying about the virus you got and that you had to format.
so if all adds up to what I said. do you play with your system. or do you have a business machine. or both in the same one??

[oblivion]

If I was running a business system I would have high security and linux or unix running...............maybe even win2k,but I have a pleasure machine. I have noticed that people that usually get viri and trojans are going to hacking and cracking websites and DLing stuff from them all the time,I DLed a certain cookbook for educational purposes,and that is how I at one point got like 5 trojans...................I did mess around with the whole firewall thing,but I realized that it was too much of a pain for the pleasure box.........................I do have AVP running in the background all the time now because it is not a resource ho like many of the others I have tried,now I just use care,and always note my DUmeter's graphs to see if there is any incoming traffic that should not be there............I do have some protection,but it is not always running in the background.

[psyklone]

well it only takes a little bit of paranoia to breed over-paranoia ... even though some would say there is no such thing. for instance when personal firewalls started to become all the rage, so to speak, people instantly felt justified for installing and configuring one on their system because of 'wow, what are all of these pings?!?! ahhh! i need to keep them out!' ...
please ...
those pings have been there for as long as you've been online and they haven't hurt you. if you have a correctly configured system, there's nothing to worry about. who cares who's pinging you or why, if you've spent as much time correctly configuring your system as you do worrying about who's trying to 'knock on your door' then there's nothing to fear. no big deal. sit back and enjoy the internet experience instead of sitting in worried anxiety over who all of the packets are coming from.
but hey, i'm not here to criticize and to each his own. on a machine were there is mission critical data, then there is no excuse not to have it fully protected. for a home system, even a home system with some sensitive information on it (and don't say that none of you don't have any on your system because we all know better) ... as long as it's set up properly and you've got your bindings and permissions set correctly there is nothing to worry about because the kids are going to run the port scanners until the end of time but they don't have the motivation, much less the skill, to try and crack a system with even the slightest security.

cheers to all

[oblivion]

People with the real know how generally do not go after the home user...........and also........I can see a firewall if you have a static IP adress

[jad1097]

Maybe I don't need a firewall but with a cable modem it sure does make me feel a little more secure. I just do not want some college kid fubaring my sys. The reason I say that is I have a college across the street from me and I know many of them kids have cable modems.

My main concern is some cracker getting in and damaging something. As FrozenLiquidity
said there is a huge difference between a hacker and cracker and people just do not understand that because the media calls crackers hackers.

[Gene C.]

you got me there. better delete those cookies. he he, and yes. I have gotten horse's to. the last one was on thanksgiveing 99. I have also gotten virus from programs that were scaned twiced by both norton & mcaffee. and were showed clean. one I unzipped them still ok. when I hit install. there it was. to late. it wiped out my whole 13 gig drive.it locked up norton and installed anyway. next time couldn't boot. got a boot virus. and I've had a lot of them.

if you will do a search on me here and hostclub. you will see. I've had more than my share of them and data loss out the *****. personal and business.
I have also gotten virus from brand new unopened sealed 1.4 disks to. have some here I saved. and have sent some to norton.

so that is why I said what I did. you never know wheree they are now days. like the kid that wrote the i love you one. he is only 15 yrs. old. and where he lives there is no such thing as a cyber laws. so, he might just walk on this one.

and they had kicked him himoff another server on arpil 1 this year for the same thing. so go figure. the only real cure is to not use a system at all. or buy 1.4 disks or even new programs from the stores ect.

[oblivion]

Norotn sucks and so does mcrappe......AVP has detected viri those two never could dream of in tests I have run.

Cable modem + firewall = good thing.

I thought it was merely speculation that the auther was only 15 that wrote the love letter viri.......and speculation that he was actually from the phillipines.......if he was intelligent he could of easily made it look like he was 15 by saying "school sucks" or whatever he said..........and he could have easily made the virus go to that phill. website as sort of a divirsion..

[psyklone]

yeah ... actually the speculation i've heard is actually that he's 23. i don't know where the 15 year old age range came from. but anyone that knows how to telnet to good ol' port 25 on a sendmail server that allows forwarding ... and knows how to use the 'helo', 'mail from', 'rcpt to', etc, etc, commands can make a message appear to come from about anywhere.

[Gene C.]

on the world news at 6:30 P.m. fl time and another web news site they said he was 15. now it has changet to 23. but, with this copied statement. who knows? and I quote:

"He's been using a lot of hacked accounts, so what happened is ... he illegally gets the user name and passwords, and he uses those accounts for his own purposes."
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2562655,00.html http://news.lycos.com/headlines/TopNews/article.asp?docid=RTNEWS-VIRUS-LOVE&date=20000505

so, maybe it they had a firewall. he couldn't get to them. hell, he might be right here on the board now with us. and they also said on the news. that he had set out another one that would download all world uses password to a account of his.

but, they stoped it from going to far. this is one smart dude. just think of the good use he would be a lot of companies today. if he had tookk the right road.

[Gene C.]

update: they first said it would only overwrite a couple of files. quote from norton. just got in an e-mail to go to this site:

: Copies itself over files with the following extensions: .vbs, .vbe, .js, .jse, .css, .wsh, .sct, .hta, .jpg, .jpeg, .mp3, and .mp2
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/vbs.loveletter.a.html

this stuff could got on for a while. he might have a bunch of them ready to release later on in a few days,weeks, hell , with his mind he could do almost anything. he makes me sick with envy. the use I could get out of abilities.

[CMonster]

Just don't any of you send me attachments!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Warthog]

hehe http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

Warthog

[Wiz]

You have no reason to be fearful if you use a proxy server with a few hidden suprises. For example, write a program called "Credit Card Account" which would be inviting to any cracker(dont be afraid of hackers, gotta watch out for those crackers though =]) who will run it thinking they will see a very juicy piece of info.

They run it and, viola, they have just unleashed a nice little virus, written in VB, which just deletes their entire HDD on the next boot. They are very easy to make, but are quite destructive.

This might be harsh to some of you, but it teaches them not to mess with people.