How do you know if you are being hacked?

[kuso]

And remember...........I know SFA about PC`s

 

[ZECH]

SFA?? Most of the time you don't!!! That is why it is so important to get a good firewall program or have a router in place. I just had a trial version of Zone alarm pro run out and installed the real thing last Sunday. Have had 4000 or so attempts blocked already and many were high risk!

 

[kuso]

Link me up man....where to get this trial? I`m pretty sure already I have been.....

 

[ZECH]

Sent you a PM buddy.

 

[kuso]

Thanks buddy

 

[OceanDude]

Originally posted by dg806
SFA?? Most of the time you don't!!! That is why it is so important to get a good firewall program or have a router in place. I just had a trial version of Zone alarm pro run out and installed the real thing last Sunday. Have had 4000 or so attempts blocked already and many were high risk!

dg - I used zone alarm a few years ago and it was kind of good for a while but it tended to give me too many false alarms. It's a great tool for finding out if you have any trojans that you downloaded though since all of a sudden it will give you a warning if a program you did not authorize starts hitting the net.

The best protection from outside hackers (assuming you did not install a trojan by downloading it yourself without knowing) is to get a hardware firewall. The linksys router BEFSR41 is a handy little device you can pick up for dirt cheep now at most online mailorder or compusa - last I saw a few years ago they were $70. I bet they are under $50 now.

Also PestControl (http://pestpatrol.com/) iwhich can be purchased pretty cheep all over the place and immediately downloaded gives you complete control over cookies and also will detect any spyware that you or a friend/household member may have installed on purpose or by accident..

 

[yellowmoomba]

Check out this software (FREE)

http://spybot.eon.net.au/

 

[OceanDude]

yellow - no disrespect but I am always very speculative of any free software. This is the single best way to pickup a trojan from companies touting "free" security software. I prefer to pay and have a known company address with tangible assets to go after with the lawyers if they are not legit.

 

[yellowmoomba]

None taken



spybot has numerous articles about it in PC mags so I figured I'd give it a try. It found two keylogging programs and a bunch of "other stuff" on my machine.

I did however get a hardware router for piece of mind along with Nortons Live update running.

 

[OceanDude]

wow - pretty scarey finding logging sw on your own machine huh? It's getting to be where it is jus about impossible to have privacy anymore. I am to the point where I am about ready to get a seperate hard drive which I use for only my personal data and keep it on a seperate machine off the net or turn on file encryption. In the old days they use to have a read/write hardware switch on the hard drive fron panels taht you could press to physically prevent the heads from extending to the data. Wish they still had that kind of physical protection on home PCs.
With all the new homeland security initiatives and patriot act stuff going on it's going to be too easy for some over zealous gov person working with sophisticated equipment to gain access to everyone's personal info. It's not that I don't think we need some kind of safeguards to stop 9/11 kinds of things but I sure am getting woried about a rogue agent gettig lose and causing havoc (not that I have anything to hide).

 

[yellowmoomba]

I actually found the keylogging programs "log" that contained:

email messages
passwords for my hotmail accounts
passwords for my work email account
VPN login/password for work (SCARY!!!) - won't tell my boss about that!!!

I was worried that it might track my Bank Account infomation since I do online banking from home - I changed all my passwords and am monitoring my bank statement very close.

I feel bad for most people since they have no clue on how to protect their PC's.

 

[Nigeepoo]

Originally posted by OceanDude
dg - I used zone alarm a few years ago and it was kind of good for a while but it tended to give me too many false alarms. It's a great tool for finding out if you have any trojans that you downloaded though since all of a sudden it will give you a warning if a program you did not authorize starts hitting the net.

The current versions of ZoneAlarm can turn off visible alerts. What with these msblast and nichi worms around at the moment, I'm getting pinged every few seconds by other ntlworld users. ZA (freebie) blocks 100% of in and out attempts.

Steve Gibson http://grc.com/default.htm has some good tools for testing firewalls (ShieldsUP & Leaktest) as well as other useful utilities for improving PC security.