How Vulnerable is a Dial-up connection?

I am a relatively new person in the security section. My main question is, how vulnerable is a dial-up connection? I understand the problem with broadband connections (knowing someone who was burned). Other than an ani-virus, what security options are the best? Go all out (i.e.- be my normal paranoid self?!?) or just wing it? The pc's specs are as follows...

P I - 233MMX
32 MB RAM
8 GB hard drive
56 Kb modem

(~Grumbles as I read my specs~ Damn credit card bills! ~grins~)

Many thanks,
Kevin a.k.a. Flare

 

P.S. - I just finished reading "Realistic dangers for average Joe?" But feel free to post anyway!

 

Greetings KEV

an welcome aboard the security/privacy train ...sit back in your cushy BB seat....enjoy scenery of glimmering posts and topics.......relish the intoxicating scent of security in the air

Kev its not so much a matter of what type of connection a person uses.....it more a matter of what type of security is on the person's computer.. since you have already read the post by Spy 1.....you are ahead of many others out there who have no idea what security is.
using a firewall is an absolute....plus a good anti-virus program....an if possible a good anti-trojan program.... an if money is a concern...there are many free products....which can be upgrade to payed for shareware when possible.
the very subject of security products would take months to discuss.....its an ever changing situation.....a new exploit is discovered an suddenly its back to square one.......
my suggestion is that you hang-out here at the BB awhile....read the many topics.....an just learn one step at a time......another sujjestion is that you LIST WHAT YOU DON"T HAVE....an ask opinions on where to locate the best programs to cover whats missing........

regards

snowman

 

What do you mean by "burned" Flare. But I was thinking suppose you only connect to the Net for 5 minutes to download email from your POP account daily, there's less chance of being "hacked into" than staying online for hours and hours? You can't be hacked into when you are disconnnected can you?

 

Hi Flare. I think thats a question that we all have when we first start learning the possible dangers of being on the net.
For a person on dial up which has a dynamic IP, or one that changes with each logon, the dangers are diminished somewhat. I like to equate it with random acts of violance. Not likely to happen to me, but it is going to happen to someone.
A note about attacks. I believe it is highly unlikely that a person with a single computer or small home lan is going to come under any kind of attack as such. What you will see if you have a firewall that logs all scans and connection attempts is a lot of attempted connections and possibly a lot of random scans that are looking for open ports. Not very many people are going to waste their time or resources in a Dos or DDos attack on the home user, unless you have really Tee'd somebody off.
Here's the deal. A script kiddie will get himself some scanning tools and some trojans like sub 7, and set his scanner up to scan a range of IPs and ports. This scanner program will log the open ports it finds and at some later date, the kiddie will come back, get his list of found IPs and ports and using any number of tools available, start probing the ports for return packets from installed trojans. Trojans that have been installed on peoples machines when they clicked an exe file in an attachment to an email. You see, there are lots of people out there ignorant of safety practices and do all kinds of things that aid the malcontents in doing their mischief. This is just one possible scenario, but you see, if a scanner found an open port on your machine on Fri and the kiddie got around to checking the ports out on Sat, you would not be there.
Another scenario is when a worm like code red is on the loose, it will try to spread itself thru open ports in IP ranges it is working.
Most of the entries I see in my firewall log are random scans, and unfinished connections terminated. Sometimes if you leave a website and the conversation between your box and the website did not get properly terminated, the website will keep sending packets at you for a long time. Almost looks like an attack in the record.
Having said all that, I feel it is strongly advisable for everyone to have the best firewall they can afford and understand how to use properly. That goes for AVs and ATs, too.
You never know when you are going to be the target of that random act. There are people out there that are always looking to see what they can find on someone elses computer. There are a few that just like to be nasty and mess with peoples machines.
Hope this helps answer some of the questions you asked.

 

Nicely said root !

Technodrome

 

Thank you.