Why you need a firewall

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

I'm sure most of you heard that on Tuesday, the internet's root DNS servers 
were crippled by a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack, where the machines were 
flooded with endless garbage IP packets so the real DNS requests couldn't get 
through.

What I recently learned, though, is this was really a Distributed Denial Of 
Service (DDOS) attack.  That means that hackers hacked into hundreds of other 
peoples' home computers and then remotely commanded them all to attach the 
root DNS servers at the same time, probably without the owners' knowledge.

What I'm trying to point out here is that it's easy to say "well, I don't have 
any important data on my machine hooked up to a cablemodem or DSL line, so I 
don't need a firewall", but that doesn't mean your machine can't be used by 
hackers to hurt others.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
DDDD   David Kramer                           http://thekramers.net
DK KD  
DKK D  "Where's the kaboom?  There was supposed to be an
DK KD  earth-shattering kaboom."
DDDD                                           - Marvin the Martian