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Posted by Lord Turkey Cough on February 5, 2008, 10:05 pm
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> "Daave" wrote:
>
>> but I'm just curious if someone who has an ordinary modem and is not
>> running a software firewall, etc. will be in danger of being infected
>> within 12 minutes as is commonly believed,
>
> I am that person! When the Swen worm first appeared some years ago I
> was infected within seconds of going online. I didn't know about it or
> the patch that had been released because I'd been abroad for a while
> and hadn't been keeping the system up to date.
>
>> and if so, what is the mechanism by which this can happen?
>
> It happens because in Windows NT, by default, there are certain
> network services running with ports open listening for incoming
> traffic. This is a very bad idea but as we know, Microsoft have
> tended to put ease of use ahead of security. Any vulnerabilities
> (bugs) in those services may be exploitable so that code is injected
> and run. There are machines (bots) constantly scanning IP address
> ranges looking for such opportunities.
>
> I have since closed all ports so that even without a firewall I am no
> longer open to these kind of attacks.
LOL yes as long as your are not connected to the internet which kind of
defeats the object.
Why not get well protected and unplug your modem etc???
>
>> In my scenario, the PC is just sitting idle. Or sitting at Windows
>> Update. :-)
>
> I also don't allow automatic updates; in fact I haven't updated past
> Win2k SP2 (no longer supported). However, I wouldn't advise this for
> most people.
You have gazillions of other software acessing the interenet when you
you do use the internet that can be infected.
You are just bocking one hole in a culander. Rather pointless.
>
>
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