|
|
|
|
More How to Fight Back when Computer Criminals Strike... ZoneAlarm gave a numerical address for the attacker. I typed it into the location window of my browser. Lo and behold, what came up was - that self-same security portal. What the heck - did the guys who run this site get jollies by breaking into visiting computers? I ran a quick whois lookup, got the owner's name and phone, and gave him a call. He sounded sufficiently polite and concerned that I decided not to erase the hard drive of his web site. OK, OK, I wouldn't have done that even if he had called me bad names. Allergic to jail, that's me. Geek note: "Whois" is a request to learn who owns and administers an Internet domain name. Some web sites, for example http://www.networksolutions.com, have a "whois" box where you can enter your request. In Linux, from your terminal window, simply give the command "whois" followed by a domain name. The next day he phoned back to thank me. A giant web hosting company that carries a lot of other customers, he explained, owned the server that hosted his web site. To be exact, the other customers' web sites offered streaming video. That's the kind of stuff haxorz call pr0n. Veritable hacker magnets. While saving big bucks by obtaining free streaming video, the baddies had also installed a program that would automatically try to break into the computers of everyone who paid a visit. Thanks to my alert, they had just eradicated a nest of computer criminals Tools You Will Need Many home computer firewalls pat you on your head and tell you "What, me worry?" If you're reading this, you probably want more than that. For fighting back you need a firewall that immediately alerts you when someone attacks. This is because many attackers get online with a dial-up modem. With this kind of service, every time they log on, their online service assigns new Internet addresses to their computers. If you notify their Internet provider of suspected crime right away, they will still have a record of who used that address at that time. My favorite firewall is ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonelabs.com, for Windows). Its default setting pops up an alert whenever a suspicious event occurs. Other Windows firewalls such as Neowatch (http://www.neoworx.com) and Black Ice Defender (http://www.iss.net) also pop up alerts. Norton Personal Firewall (http://www.symantec.com, one of the few firewalls available for Mac OS 8 and up, (also available for Windows) also can be configured to pop up alerts. For Linux, set up TCP Dump to send alerts to a terminal window. Keep that window open in a corner of your desktop and you will be ready for action. |
|
|
|
