ZA free., versions:

Someone suggested that I get ZA 4.5 (free ver.), but I can't find it on ZA's site. I now have 2.6.231, but have also been considering a trial of LnS.

While my current ver. has me stealthed per GRC tests, which means it is doing the job, I had to wonder: if a firewall renders our PC "invisible" on the net so to speak, why is is stopping so many attempts to get into our PCs? I mean, if they can't "see" us behind firewall, what goes on there?
Are the crazies out there just running through all possible numbers, trying to find ports to get into, for nefarious schemes?! (I don't know anything about how black hats operate). Heard of port scanners, but not much else. And so, I do run security apps, while surfing.

Thanks for any help, SG1 (Pat)

 

Hi Pat,

Here is the 4.5 download:

ZA4.5

rgds,
Martin

 

That's exactly what is happening - worms will try scanning IP address ranges for new machines to infect and those looking for systems vulnerable to particular exploits will scan whole networks (often using tools like Nmap). As long as your firewall is blocking these, you are protected from such scans.

However, further precautions are needed for those applications allowed Internet access since these are vulnerable points (e.g. email attachments can carry viruses hence the recommendation of an anti-virus scanner, web pages can include exploits and malicious active content, hence the need for web filters or spyware monitors). Internet Relay Chat, Peer-to-Peer networks and Usenet are more risky since it is harder to verify a file's origin so a specialised anti-trojan scanner should be used if you download files from these sources.

 

The vast majority, 99.9% of those "attempts" that you see in your log are actually "only" pings from scanners that are scanning the entire Internet or at least a portion of it. They are not actual hack attempts, someone is not trying to get into your machine, just checking for what open ports they can find.

Acadia

 

in my case, the majority of the attempts are from my ISP.

 

Here is the free version of 4.5. Pro 4.5 (linked above) is no longer available off the ZA board.

http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free/information/znalm/zaReleaseHistory.html