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More on Quick and Easy Ways to Keep Hackers out of your Home Computer... Let’s return to that problem the Sygate scanner found on Wargirl: the "Trojan" on port 5000. Did we need to panic? Had some hacker already broken into Wargirl? The geek solution is to arrange for another computer to try to connect with the "Trojan" while Wargirl runs Zone Alarm on maximum security. This gives the alert of Figure 6:
Figure 6: Firewall reporting an attempted connection to Wargirl’s port 5000. This was a false alarm. Wargirl’s firewall reports that the "Trojan" on port 5000 is merely Windows Millennium SSDP Service. We can ignore it. Or we can be extra safe and have the firewall block it. Figure 5 shows SSDP shut down. In case you were wondering, SSDP Service is "Simple Service Directory Protocol." In Windows XP this feature is called "Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)." Windows computers use SSDP or UPnP to automatically configure plug and play devices from across a network. If you don’t need this service, it is important to use your firewall to shut it down. Hackers know how to use it to crash or break into your computer. Fortunately, you don’t need to know every geeky thing about services and ports to secure your computer. The important thing is that a good firewall will let you know whether you need to worry about a program or service that wants to access the Internet. When in doubt, you can shut it down. If shutting it down breaks something, you can bring it back with a click of a mouse. In the case of SSDP, shutting it off might keep someone from using a home printer attached to another computers on the home network. The solution is to allow SSDP for the local network but shut it off to the Internet. How to Keep out Viruses and Worms Viruses hide inside seemingly OK programs such as screen savers, browser plug-ins, games or animated greeting cards. They also lurk inside MS Word documents and other MS Office programs. The most dangerous viruses install programs that let people snoop on your computer. These are called Trojans, after the Trojan Horse that sneaked Greek soldiers inside the city of Troy. Worms are often more dangerous than viruses because they don’t need to hitchhike inside other programs. The most powerful worms, such as Code Red, search the Internet at random, breaking into computers. Some, such as SirCam, Nimda and Code Red II, create a back door on the victim computer that lets hackers sneak in. How to Use Antivirus Programs Effectively The author used to be on a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency email list for computer security whizzes. Every month or so someone managed to email a virus to the rest of us. Does this mean us whizzes aren’t so great after all? Or does it show how seductive and sneaky viruses can be? You don’t have to be a Ph.D. genius to keep viruses out. It just takes common sense (which not all geniuses have) and some basic knowledge. The first step is to install an antivirus program. You should install it from a CD from which you boot your computer. If you install it any other way, any virus or worm on your computer may be able to fool the antivirus program. If your computer doesn’t boot from the CD, you may be able to configure it to do so. In the kind of computer that runs Windows, right after you turn it on, hit the "del" key. This should bring up the BIOS (basic input output system). Use the tab and arrow keys to navigate. Look for a menu item named something like "BIOS features setup." Under that menu you should find a way to choose where your computer looks for a boot disk. Set the CDROM either first or second (if floppy is the first boot device). If this doesn’t work, if your computer will boot from a floppy, try to get an antivirus product that includes a boot floppy. This will also usually work if you already have a boot floppy of any sort. Some boot floppies start with a menu that asks whether you want to boot with CDROM support. Be sure to choose this option. Next, set up your antivirus program to be as paranoid as possible. You might think it will automatically be plenty paranoid. However, many antivirus products only give minimal protection unless you configure them to do more. It may seem logical that your antivirus only needs to scan programs. However, what if a virus is hiding dormant in a non-program file just waiting for you to accidentally activate it? Zip files are famous for hiding viruses. Does your antivirus program scan the Recycle Bin? (See Figure 7.) Does it scan the hidden System Restore directories of Windows ME and XP? Some viruses hide in those locations. |
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