Re: Is a Firewall Necessary with Dial-Up?

From:
Date: 05/20/02 

Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 17:18:24 +0100

Sorry, but this is not correct. Whether dial-up or broadband, you always
need a firewall when you are on the Internet, no matter where and when.
This morning only, we had 1436 attempted break-ins into our corporate
network. We have a hardware firewall but also insist that all employees have
Norton Personal Firewall installed for the times when they take their
laptops home (which all of them do) and we see regular attacks on each of
the laptops just by simple home dial-up internet use.

I totally agree with you that ActiveX and Java are a real danger to the
integrity of any Computer.

Norton Personal Firewall can handle all the JavaScript, ActiveX and cookie
business very well and gives you excellent security.

Regards,
Oliver 

--
Please reply to post only as email will not work.

"Larry W4CSC" <spaminator@knology.net> wrote in message
news:3ce8e6b6.1774439@news.knology.net...
> No, it's not.  Just make sure you have a good virus scanner like
> Norton Anti-Virus that's kept up-to-date with weekly definition
> updates from the Auto update facility.  You'll be scanned on dialup,
> but it means nothing.
>
> I DO recommend getting away from Outlook Express, which is like
> walking around the city with a huge "KICK ME HARD" sign on your back.
> OE is what the worms are all targeted for, so why be a target.  The
> systems I setup all use Pegasus 4 for email, Free Agent for text
> newsgroups like this one, SBNews bot for stripping binary newsgroups
> and XNews for selectively downloading binaries from newsgroups.
> There's another message I posted, yesterday, that tells you the
> particulars of my recommendations which are very successful.  While
> you're uninstalling OE from the Windows Setup tab of Add/Remove
> Programs in Control Panel (or wherever Billy hid it in XP), uninstall
> Windows Scripting Host, too.  Windows Scripting Host (WSH) is Billy's
> gift to the worm coders.  It runs "Visual Basic Scripting" (.vbs)
> files.  If vbs worms have no operating system installed in Windows,
> they can't run!  Sound logical?  It's not rocket science.  Both of
> these cracker targets are part of Windows, any flavor.  Without OE
> spreading the worms to your Address Book friends and WSH running them
> on your computer....you're immune even if you DO get one!  You don't
> need WSH at all.  It was a gift to the spyware spammers.
>
> There are two main issues on browsers that are big security
> holes....javaSCRIPT (not Java) and ActiveX....both of which allow
> webpages to run vicious code.  It's like giving webpage operators
> their own little operating system on trust to run code on YOUR
> computer.  I handle this problem by having one browser (Opera 6 here)
> with everything turned off....no cookies, javascript, activex,
> nothing.....and one browser (IE6) with everything turned on for when I
> just gotta have it and am forced to trust the webpage (like Windows
> Update).  Javascript and ActiveX are being used by vicious webpage
> operators to run code on your system to trash it like a virus....but
> sneak past the FUDware firewalls, etc., which allow the browser access
> to the internet.
>
> Another great addition to your browser is WebWasher from
> www.webwasher.com, the great engineers from Siemens in Germany.
> Webwasher is a proxy server all html runs through.  It sits between
> the browsers and the net, filtering out spam, popup windows, cookies,
> web bugs, URL code with embedded data collected from your computer,
> etc.....before it can get out on the net.  Code calls for a spam from
> doubleclick.  WW intercepts the call and REPLIES with a byte, making
> the code think it got to talk to the server, thwarting their efforts
> to spam you but not waiting for the browser call to time out.  Dialup
> customers, like yourself, will REALLY appreciate the increase in
> speed, not having to load those moving GIF monster movies on every
> commercial webpage and those popup movies from the spammers.  WW is
> free for home use.  Works great!
>
> Look for W4CSC back to yesterday to get direct access on
> www.tucows.com to get the shareware/freeware above.....
>
>
> On Sun, 19 May 2002 23:35:32 -0700, "Chris Hecker"
> <chrish@solarwinds.com> wrote:
>
> >Hello everyone,
> >
> >I have a dial-up internet access.  Could you tell me if a firewall is
> >necessary?  Thanks in advance for any info.
> >
> >Chris
> >
> >Christopher's Place - http://www.solarwinds.com/users/chrish
> >
> >
>
>
> Larry

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