Computers can communicate over networks. (Surprise!) That’s how you’re reading this post. The machine that this site is hosted on is listening for requests for connection. When it receives a request it answers back with a web page. In fact, computers can listen for a great many different kinds of connection at the same time. In networking we talk about a computer listening on a given “port”. The web server for this site (and most web sites) listens on what’s called port 80. There are 65535 possible network ports that a computer can listen for incoming connections on.
Tag: firewall
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Most home pc users lacking on PC security…
Surprise!!… ummm wait, no… This article has come out while I’ve been in the midst of cleaning up a Windows ME pc that has been “0\/\/ned” (owned/controlled…) by someone other than the owner for a bit over 15 months. The system had NO antivirus, no firewall (no antispyware) and used dialup for internet. (That much said, this is probably the most infected dialup system I’ve seen… 30-100 virii, 230+spyware remnants/etc.) Anyway…. the article from cnet news claims that a recent survey found 81% of home pc users lacked either
at least one of three types of critical security–a firewall, updated antivirus software or anti-spyware protection
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Sunbelt acquiring Kerio Personal Firewall
Kerio Personal firewall will be acquired by Sunbelt according to the sunbeltblog. It looks as though the acquisition will be complete within a month. They hope to offer downloads “within weeks”. There will be a price reduction and discounts for Sunbelt users, and discounts for Kerio users on Sunbelt software. Also it looks like the free edition will continue.
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Viruses and worms can come in from many directions
For a long time, email was the primary vector for viruses, before that floppy discs carried bugs from pc to pc. Then came network worms exploiting windows security vulnerabilities which led to the rise of firewalls and the increase in viruses piggy-backing into the system through browser bugs. But, any program that listens for data coming from the network could be an entry way for good traffic, or bad. The Securityfix is talking today about November being a record month for Instant Messenger worms.
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Old hardware has new legs with linux
This isn’t actually news in the “new” sense, but to many people this is newsworthy. From slashdot… aselabs is running a bit on DSL linux on an older laptop (Pentium 266MMX with 64 MB RAM). Most people would agree that is old/slow hardware by current standards and this is something that can be useful still with linux as the base operating system (fluxbox as the Window manager – I think that’s what dsl uses?)
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Free personal firewalls for windows will be a bit scarcer
It’s too bad that Symantec will be killing off a free personal firewall. I guess they didn’t like supporting competition for their (large) Internet Security with included firewall… About three months ago, Symantec bought Sygate who made a Sygate Pro and Sygate free personal firewall. Both the Pro and the free version will get the ax from what it looks like…
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Ooops… hard drive maker ships trojan on storage media
Oooops… According to the Sunbelt blog a Japanese storage maker (I-O Data Device) has offered to exchange drives that were discovered to have been shipped out with the Tompai-A, a worm which would give a cracker backdoor access to a machine. It affects portable hard drive’s in the companies HDP-U series.
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Ultravnc for remote computer support
A little while back I talked some about TightVNC which for a long time has been my favorite implementation of a remote framebuffer, or remote desktop viewing protocol known as VNC (Virtual Network Computing.) The original VNC (now realvnc) came out of AT&T research labs in the UK and has developed quite a following as a pcanywhere alternative depending on what you need to do. Now, tightvnc has been a favorite of mine for a couple reasons. 1) it’s well supported under linux which is a must for me…, 2) it excels at slower speed connections. Which is also fairly important to me.
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Mandriva 2006 review
Madpengiun now has a review up of Mandriva 2006. I’m still hoping soon to have time to sit down and upgrade on at least the laptop. The biggest problem the reviewer had was (slow?) performance under KDE which he suspected could be hardware specific. Overall it sounds like things are VERY well done, it looks like a nice interactive firewall, a la zonealarm is in there which the reviewer was pleased with.
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Windows Denial of Service via RPC vulnerability
The Sans Institute is reporting on a vulnerability in Windows 2000 and XP SP1 (sp2 and 2003 not affected), that “could allow an attacker to levy a denial of service attack of limited duration”. It appears that valid login credentials are necessary for this. There is no patch yet, the best solution at this point is to firewall off services that are not necessary.