From my McAfee Personal Firewall log, I can see unsolicited connection attempts. They are coming at 5-10 minute intervals, and each consists of about 10 transmissions over a period of 1-2 seconds. They show several points of origin (obviously fake) but using the firewall’s trace option, I can see that no matter their origin or initial routing, the last link is always from a point in south-central Wisconsin to me.
Questions:
1. Should I be concerned? The firewall is blocking the transmissions, but I feel like I’m under constant attack.
2. I have a dialup line. My ISP says since I get a different IP each time I connect, it would be virtually impossible for this to happen unless I had some spyware alerting someone when I was "on the air". However, I have McAfee spyware protection, Spybot and Windows Malicious Software removal. None can find a problem. Do I need to look further for spyware?
Thanks for any help.
Hello Bill,
It looks like you have all the software in place to protect yourself. Unless you accidently approved the activity of a virus communicating with the internet, then you should be fine.
If you want to make sure, you can always use a bootable antivirus CD to scan the drive for viruses, but I don’t think you need to worry.
As for being under attack – yes, you and I and everyone else is under attack every day! It’s crazy out there and far too many people have unsecured systems that are being used for these probes.
If you want to be 100% sure nothing is going across the wire, then install wireshark (free packet sniffer) and start recording when your computer is idle. This will tell you exactly what is being transmitted!
Best regards,
Jim.
Jim,
Thanks for the advice and recommendation for Wireshark. I did install Wireshark, and it doesn’t show anything inappropriate being sent from my machine. The potential hackers must be using a shotgun approach and just trying to hit anybody they can. My firewall is blocking these packet flurries, so I guess I’m OK. I’ve tested my defenses using your very useful web site and everything passes fine.
Thanks again for your help.
—– Bill