Why you need a firewall

[rardoe at rarcom.com (Chris Tresco)]

Something to add...

A lot of users out there would be absoltely flabberghasted (sp?) at the
number of times per day my linux box acting as a router/firewall for my
ATT Broadband cable connection is probed or attacked.  I run snort to
log these things... I honestly get at least 100 attack attempts and
probes per day.... it only takes one of these to work successfully for
someone to be compromised.



On Thu, 2002-10-24 at 11:48, David Kramer wrote:
> 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
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