Hacker Probes: dangerous or not??

[Mitch]

I use Zone Alarm to protect my computer from intruders and NeoTrace to identify who the attackers were using the address extracted from Zone Alarm. I have 3 to 4 attempted intrusions eacy day which I identify and then report to the abuse area of my ISP.

My question is, is this really dangerous? Is it just floating random pings or serious attempts to do real damage? Can they penetrate Zone Alarm? If they can and they are dangerous, does it pay to shut down my computer and/or my Cable modem when not in use to minimize the exposure

Thanks in advance for the advice.

Mitch

[This message has been edited by Mitch (edited 07-16-2000).]

[chacmool]

Just my experiences/observations while using BlackIce Defender, Norton Internet Security 2000 & ZoneAlarm:

1. Have noticed that 98% of the "attacks" are during normal business hours.

2. Seldom (can count on two hands) get "attacks" in early AM, late PM & weekends.

3. Have DSL, & once, traced an "attack" back to @home...a cable modem company. (the @home users are always upset with the @home scans)

4. Think there is a lot of background noise, stray signals, bouncing around, etc.; on the Web. Once, had a notification of a ...failure to deliver an e-mail...a full month after I had sent it.


My 2¢

[CoolJ]

I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM-I USE ZONEALARM AND I GET LIKE 30 ALERTS A DAY LIKE THIS
The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (ICMP Echo Request ('Ping')) from 172.167.249.253.

Is this dangereous? when i do a trace in the host name it says the name of my cable company, why would my cable company ping me?

[Mitch]

Originally posted by CoolJ:
I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM-I USE ZONEALARM AND I GET LIKE 30 ALERTS A DAY LIKE THIS
The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (ICMP Echo Request ('Ping')) from 172.167.249.253.

Is this dangereous? when i do a trace in the host name it says the name of my cable company, why would my cable company ping me?

It may be that the cable company pings all their customers during the day to determine the status of their network problems. Maybe that is also why the Cable company advises everyone to leave their cable modems on all the time. They may use those pings to recognize problems and correct them as they occur.

Mitch

[SeedOfChaos]

During all the time I have my firewalls installed (same time I got cable), I had just one serious attack, and ICMP Ping Storm. The rest was just harmless stuff like UDP port probes, and trojan horse probes. But of course, if you don't have any trojan horse installed, they can't do anything about it. Use a good virus scanner for that purpose.

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"I have lost all my beliefs to a world of hypocrisy"
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(Hypocrisy - Paradox)