I just installed DSL service and it’s cool. Even the legendary hamsters seem to run a little faster. And, because I chose dynamic IP addressing, I got a pretty good deal.
With the dynamic IP, different every time I log on, do I really need a firewall (with its corresponding config complexities) to protect against hacking?
My wife and I are generally logged in for about twelve hours a day in one continuous session but we shut the computer down for the rest of the day.
I googled a bit but couldn’t find any site addressing this question. Insights would be appreciated.
Yes, a lot, if not most people get hacked through vulnerabilities which hackers find by scanning broad ranges of IPs.
It doesn’t matter if you’re only online for 5 minutes, if they get control, they can plant their program which will “call home” every time you log on and give them access to your whole system.
Also the firewall protects against outgoing traffic and will detect and block trojans and spyware which you may inadvertantly download while they are trying to call home.
That sounds sensible, Eleusis. I guess I will now plunge into the joys of ZoneAlarm…though without much enthusiasm. Thanks.
BTW, my wife was born not far from the original Eleusis. She says that particular district of Athens is now a grungy industrial park…which I find depressing. I guess Demeter’s golden shafts of wheat now come covered in soot. Oh, well.
The freebies version of ZA works just fine, and doesn’t require a whole lot of setup attention. Once you’ve told it to remember that programs like Internet Explorer and Outlook should always be allowed to access the Internet (duh!), it doesn’t require much further attention. (When it pops up asking if such-and-such a program should be allowed access, there’s a check-off box to tell it to remember your choice.)
Initially, you’ll encounter a few programs that want to contact the outside world, and you’ll be a bit uncertain about what they are. Some will be obvious, like your anti-virus automatic updating program. But you’ll also run into a few “Generic Host Processes” (svchost.exe) whose purpose is unclear, but if you say “no” to letting them access the 'net, things like Outlook won’t work properly.
I believe the default still causes a popup message every time it detects an incoming “hit,” like a ping. Leave it on for a little while, just so you’ll see how many things it’s intercepting. Then turn it off, because it will drive you nuts (I’m on a cable modem, and I get pings roughly every 10 seconds).
After the first few days, you’ll have given the proper programs permission to access the outside world without prompting you, you’ll have turned off the popup notification of inbound stuff, and you won’t even be aware that ZA is humming along in the background, doing its bit.
Even with dynamic IPs, you have to remember that someone else had that same address a few minutes before you logged on.
Perhaps that person was doing something to get a lot of attention from hackers. Perhaps they were on for days without a firewall, and left their computer open to be a port slut.
Now, a few minutes later, you’ve got that address. You also have no firewall. The address is known to be a good one, so the hackers and script kiddies come back looking. They find out that the last person doesn’t live there anymore, but you prove to be just as easy a target. They say “Oh well, this will work, too”
So even if you haven’t been sitting on an IP for a long time, it doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t already ruined it for you.
And someone said above that most broadband ISPs have their whole IP ranges targeted. I’m on RoadRunner, and I’m definitely in one of those ranges. So even if you’re getting new addresses five times a day, they’re still all from red-flagged batches.
