I got a Linksys cable/dsl router and four port switch, not a wireless model. So far I have noticed that I no longer get any more svchost***** (inbound) alerts. Also no "Realplayer is attempting to access your compute" alerts.

 

Yep, the router features a built in firewall and port blocking

 

A router is your best friend when using cable.

 

Go to here https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 and scan your computer . This will tell you if all ports are blocked.

Out of the box , you may find that some are not .

Then create rules to block any open ones .

You should still have a software firewall also .

Also change the admin password and login on the router from the default ones to something a tad safer.

Don't use silly passwords , like "fido" or "mike1" or such!!
Too easy to crack , to make a good one ,and easy to remember , create a phrase and take the first letter from each word , like :

"I am a Big fat Kat !!" , this will give a password "IaaBfK!!" Its easy to remember but hard to crack !!!!


Good luck .

 

Good stuff. Thanks. But might have trouble agreeing with you on the ease of remembering a password such as this...

 

My password's are a hell of a lot bigger than that , i don't have any problem remembering them , you just read ,in your head, the phrase , pick the first letter and bingo !!!

After a bit you don't even have to think about it , you just rattle it off , try it ,it does work !!!!

As long as you remember the original phrase , which is easy ,you will never forget it ...

A good password cracker will take a long time to crack that , it will have to use brute force , IE , every combination of letters and numbers possible , that's a lot !!!!

The data base of a password cracker , will contain EVERY word in the English dictonary , and the German , French , etc ,etc ...
Also all common, names , events , pet names, flowers, herbs, places, common passwords ( loads of them, like qwerty, or qwerty1 or 12345, 54321 and so on ) , combination of numbers , letters , etc , etc , etc ...... it just goes on ....

You get the picture , any word you can think off , in common use is there , so forget it , it's my way or the high way !!!!!!! :-)

How about " I love my F150 truck" gives a password of "IlmF150t"
Dude that's a great passwod and soooooo easy to remember it's stupid ......

All you got to do is create a phrase that means somethin to you , it's that easy

My password is 9 characters long , it makes no sense , i can rattle that off in seconds , it's a combination of upper and lower case, with some numbers and special characters ......

I might add that the whole hackin/crackin thing is a bit over rated, the chance of your computer being hacked is slim , by your's i mean the average Joe Bloggs home computer.
However , there is a "chance" so don't make it easy ....

Crack that and ill buy you a pint :-)

 

You just made the brute force method of cracking your password much quicker by stating the length.

 

Anything above 4 characters long is gonna take awhile , 9 is gonna take forever !!!!!!

Good luck :-)

 

I just installed a wireless router that's invisible to the outside world. I can walk around my house and even work from the backyard. No cables or chords. It goes through my company's firewall too.

 

I was just kidding around with you. You are correct it would still take a long time. A good computer can manages 12,300,000,000,000 combinations/sec. But it would have to be done locally (on a password file). The brute force method will not work on distributed systems unless the password is a common word. Which goes back to your very good point of how to pick a password. I was tought the same method you described years ago and I still create my passwords that same way. A bigger problem is social engineering which is still very effective in spite of it being a threat for many years. I would bet that here in this forum these four characters "ford" show up in a lot of passwords.

 

Yeah !!! Ford and Ford1 and MyFord and F150 and on and on !!!!! :-)

Do you think they could start a "*nix Ford nerd" section :-)

 

Not sure if it would be worth it for just two people. Untill they put a Linux box or MAC OS (UNIX) box in my truck..... hmmmm... new mod?? not just yet. I couldn't do that to my 04 F150. Maybe in a few years.

 

But even if you know it is 9 characters, and you are able to leave the cracker running non-stop, it will take weeks if not months for it to match the characters. If he is really as good as he thinks he is, he changes his password every 2 weeks

 

Three!

And as for putting a box in your truck, there IS good reason to do that... Just think, 60-100GB of music... mod the shell (talking OS now) to be xmms or another jukebox program...
Insta-MP3 Player!

Add a wireless NIC... Pull into your driveway and say "Hold on, I need some fresh tunes," and download that other cure album to your system (or from someone else's system if you want to go wardialing, which I can't condone )

 

Well that's it then int it !! Tomorrow we start a campaign to have a *nix forum added here !!!!!!

Id never condone wardialin/wardrivin !!!!

The Cure rock !!!

And , eh don't bother changin my password every two weeks.

About a month or so , figure it will take that long to crack it!!

Maybe more !!!! So i figure i got's time on my side :-)

respect dudez !!!!

( and what all this has to do with installing a new router i aint got the faintest idea !!!!! )