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Road Runner Security - File and Print Sharing

2001-02-01 (updated: 2003-02-01) by

Hi guys,

You run a great site and I have very much enjoyed your tips. I'd like to share a story about security on the Roadrunner cable modem service that happened to me.

About three weeks after starting my Roadrunner account I went to my home computer to check my email. I found a nice little folder on my desktop indicating that my computer was completely unsecure. What scared me is that the hacker took copies took copies of a few files on my PC (registry, etc) and edited them, placing them in this directory. Had he actually put these files in place, I would have never run the PC again without a reload. In short, they were polite enough to let me know I had a problem, but scary enough to taunt me with what they could have done.

Now the bad part is that I work in a networking field. I know better than to do what I did, which was have my PC shared out to the rest of the PC's on my own home LAN. However, I SPECIFICALLY asked the question to my Roadrunner installer, and he assured me that the connection was encrypted, secure ... blah blah, etc. Fixing the problem was easy, I just unshared my PC in Windows networking. But had I not heard the statements from the installer, I would have done this anyway. I have since been able to fix things to do "as I want" again on my home LAN.

I saw several recommendations for software from your site, all good. I would add one more to that. Winroute by Tiny Software. It includes the ability to do NAT, routing, and firewalling, in addition to several other features your users might like, including a small email server (relay) and DHCP server. In fact, for anyone wanting to do PAT (port address translation), I would highly recommend this over some of the other products.

Again, thanks for the great site, and keep up the great tips for broadband users.

Sincerely,
Kelly Pruett

  User Reviews/Comments:
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by jasonb31 - 2006-02-08 19:07
What in the world does that have to do with Road Runner, If a hacker wants to get in and he is good enough it doesnt matter what service you have. Then you go on to say that your home lan is not secure. It sounds like someone in your house downloaded spyware to me. And you work in networking and your asking a road runner installed questions about the network lol. Thats just to much lol.
by anonymous - 2010-11-13 10:12
ROAD Runner... I had the road runner extram put in.
We had problems with it. They fixed it by turning off all the security,
the tech guy sent was a joke, I had to talk to teir 3 support,
their extream has a problem with their dns servers, their dns servers flood the new modem, and the modem thinks it is an attack and stops the internet conetion, this also had busted my firewall.
Their only fix was to disable the firewall, and security on the modem.
More scary yet, the tech told me what their wireless encryption is,
told me the code, and passwords. I ask you how does this make you feel that this is done
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