RE: Need firewall protection,

Hi,


>The other thing that I'm learning here is that the firewall/router only
>protects against incoming baddies, and does nothing to stop baddies that
>somehow make it onto my PC and "phone home".  I mentioned my paranoia
>yesterday about keyloggers.  David, I guess I'm surprised that you don't 
run
>a software firewall as well.  What protection do you have against the 
"phone
>home" baddies?

You can't stop baddies from phoning home with a software firewall! There 
are lots of
trojans (or whatever) that will just switch off your software firewall.
It may work in some cases, but you can't catch them all.

First of all, check your router config. There are lots of routers online 
with default 
passwords - so everybody can open the router up.

For software phoning home, the only solution is: Only install software 
where you are 
absolutely sure about it contains no malware.


My WinXP machine at home has no virus scanner or personal firewall. I have 
ended all unnecessary
services, so there are no ports open to the outside. So the viruses like 
Sasser or Blaster couldn't
touch me as port 445 (where they connect) was closed. I didn't even have 
the update installed.

You can do a netstat command in a dos box to show your open TCP/IP 
connections. When I'm not currently
surfing or receiving mail, my netstat output is completely empty.

The website www.ntsvcfg.de has a script to switch of all services. It has 
been developed from some 
security guys from a german newsgroup.

Regards,

Oliver

.