ping

Swither

Full Member
I was reading about peeps with hacked wow account on the sps website and this proggy was mentioned as a way to see if ur pc is secure.

select shields up

Mine was fine apart from the ping test.....I'm not sure how you fix that?

Anyone know and will it stop the xbox and other pc connection in the house working?
 

Agravaine

Professional Slacker
There's usually a setting in the router config which tells it to drop packets relating to pings (can't remember but I suspect it's something to do with ICMP) rather than replying normally or even replying that the port is blocked.

The idea is that the dirty hackers will move on quickly if they get no response at all.
 

Swither

Full Member
Tx Aggy - sorted now :) Just a tick in a box on the router.

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet � solicited or otherwise � was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.
 

Zeus

Full Member
hm. i just passed all the shieldsup tests with flying colours

("Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer.
All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet." for example)
...which seems odd, since this is a new pc without any decent security stuff on it yet :p guess my routers doing a good job, afterall!
 

Chick

Cartwheel RIGHT
WOOP i'm secure!

no Browser drive by attacks or keyloggers can infect my system any more....

:)
 

Gottaa

Full Member
Key Logger ?
keylogger.jpg
 

Zed

Rogue Chimp
Ahh MR Gibsons shields up programme. Does it tell you how suspectible you are to social engineered tests? Nope. Does it tell you how much information can go out of your network after you browse to a site that relies on PDF vulnerabilities or some of the more current vulnerabilities? Nope.

This programme shouldnt be relied on for a trust analysis of how secure you are. Anyone can click a picture of jessica albas jugs and get infected by the latest PronWare. After running the tests ive passed evreything - with a default setting on my router :)

Rubbish rubbish rubbish :) It was probably a fairly okay site 7 - 8 yrs ago mind you but even then i could fool it :)
 

Gottaa

Full Member
*looks around for his 'mac' smug-mode button*

All the attacks I end up fixing stem from sites trying to fool you into clicking a button and downloading something which will fix the problem you didn't even know about. Some look very offiicial just using a browser, though it did make me laugh seeing a 'My Computer' screen on my mac. The trouble is no software/hardware are going to make you 100% secure, at some point you have to actually pay attention, in the same way you don't follow a sat-nav driving you into a lake, you don't just click a button to install something you've never heard of.

And while I know mac's are also susceptable to attacks and spyware you have to install (though you do need to log in as root as they start which really should be key), but sat behind any standard router you get from an ISP I still reckon a PC really should be fine without any anti-virus protection, using Firefox 3.5 up with the normal security stuff on by default. You'll get a virus if you download a program illegally, or want to watch free pron, but if you are sensible you'll be fine.

5 pc's I've fixed recently, 2 from limewire, 1 from bit-torrent download, and 2 from a website infection. People may be downloading everything they want for free, but then they end up paying IT people to fix the mess, and in the long term I'm not sure they actually save money, so while film and music people may be having a hard time the IT stupid tax is working well for me :D

*wonders how long till the mac kicking begins*
 

Swither

Full Member
I wasn't too worried to begin with and just was curious about the ping test which is why I posted, as anything that further improves pc security is worth a gander I thought. Mine failed the ping test so I wanted to know why.
 

Zeus

Full Member
./shrug. as you say gottaa, macs are just as susceptible to stupidity as any pc. perhaps the reason you see more pcs with these problems than macs is just that there are more pcs out there to go wrong - oh, and that you can run more stuff on them so somethings more likely to go wrong ;) (obligatory mac bashing complete).

i'm a firm believer in everyone working within their own limits of fixing stuff. i know that if i screw up my pc royally, i can always just format the lot and start from scratch - so i tend to play fairly fast and loose with installing stuff. (that and the most sensitive thing i use this pc for, is my wow account - and i have an authenticator for that :p). I wouldnt recomend people that wouldnt know how to fix things to install things like limewire and bittorrent though. not that the programs themselves are the problem, its when you download something that claims to be 'HD version of Iron Man 2!!!', try to watch it, and then click "yes i'd like to install this 'codec'" and think "of course i'll go to this random website and install this random program, and of course it needs access to the internet to verify my codecs, thats just common sense!" - thats when you start having problems :p
what i dont appreciate is getting a phone call from relatives going 'my computers stopped working again!' - since the response to 'what did you do to it?' generally starts with 'well i uninstalled that virus checker you put on last time, because it kept using our internet to update itself" and leads on to "and so then i installed this program that said it would fix something..." ./sigh. and of course you cant get through to them that if they want to download music, they can either pay for it, or use some common sense.
 

Gottaa

Full Member
perhaps the reason you see more pcs with these problems than macs is just that there are more pcs out there to go wrong - oh, and that you can run more stuff on them so somethings more likely to go wrong ;) (obligatory mac bashing complete).

I'd agree with both of those comments 100%, which is exactly why I like my mac
[/endmacbit]

Anyone care to explain why a router responding to a ping is bad for security though ? I've always been under the impression unless I'm forward ports on the router to my particular machine the router wouldn't be sending unsolicited traffic to me anyway, is that wrong ?
 

Chick

Cartwheel RIGHT
You can do all sorts of funky things with ping.
It's also the very first thing you disable when you are securing any kind of system. It's equivalent to turning off the hall light and unplugging the door bell if you don't want the JW's to come around.

The breakdown of security flaws in browsers, the primary attack vector for malware - is as follows for 2009:
Firefox: 44%
Safari: 35%
Internet Explorer: 15%
Opera: 6%

Good Old Opera, winning the security through obscurity battle again.
 

Gottaa

Full Member
I realise it knows *something* is there from a ping, but what use is that if the router isn't forwarding any ports to your computer anyway ? In the same way you could sit in darkness to avoid people, or just ignore them when they knock.

And the breakdown of security flaws:
http://www.webdevout.net/browser-security
This one being the telling thing that other browsers fix there flaws quickly, IE don't, Safari are next on the naughty step
security-record.png
 

Zeus

Full Member
because once someone knows theres something there then, in theory, they might try harder to break into it. if your driving along looking for houses to break into, your more likely to go for the one with cast iron security gates and guard dogs than you are for the house you can't see at all :p
obviously you're even more likely to go for the one with no locks on the windows and the front door key cunningly hidden under a plant pot, so its all fairly irrelevant.
 

Gottaa

Full Member
true, but I still don't understand the actual risk a ping response gives, unless you are forwarding ports, which people generally don't, they can hammer all they want on the router, that's what it's there for, it won't be sending that traffic onward to your computer will it ?

Using the security of a house analogy, the lights are off, there is a pile of letters you can see through the letterbox, but every time you try and do anything at all your tools simply bounce off and don't make contact with the house.

I'm just confused because I thought the whole advantage of modern routers is that they offer that extra layer of protection, as opposed to old dial-up stuff where a ping to the address would be actually pinging your computer directly and all traffic would go straight to your computer
 

StGeorge

Full Member
true, but I still don't understand the actual risk a ping response gives, unless you are forwarding ports, which people generally don't, they can hammer all they want on the router, that's what it's there for, it won't be sending that traffic onward to your computer will it ?

Using the security of a house analogy, the lights are off, there is a pile of letters you can see through the letterbox, but every time you try and do anything at all your tools simply bounce off and don't make contact with the house.

I'm just confused because I thought the whole advantage of modern routers is that they offer that extra layer of protection, as opposed to old dial-up stuff where a ping to the address would be actually pinging your computer directly and all traffic would go straight to your computer

I'm not an expert on this but I believe that you can send ICMP echo requests with large packet sizes which then ties up your router's bandwidth when it tries to reply. This is (I think) how DOS (denial of service) attacks work.

So even if you have no ports forwarded from your router it can still be rendered inoperable by a DOS attack.
 
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