Broadband

[voidx]

As I said it's highly unlikely in any event. But, there is no chance if the port is soldered shut.

What do you mean by port here? Ports as Monty is talking about, TCP/UDP are logical constructs, not physical ones. They are on the Transport layer of the OSI model, which is 3 layers above the physical layer. They are all coding. So there's no physical port on a wire that can be "soldered" shut to turn off TCP/UDP ports. If by ports you mean jacks on a switch or router this is also completely unneccessary. If nothing is plugged into the port, its a physical impossibility for anything to get through on it.

There are only two definitions of ports as I see it in this sense. The physical jacks on a switch/router that you plug cables into, and logical ports such as TCP/UDP. Neither of which can be secured by being "soldered" shut.

A logical port that has been closed will not accept any traffic period. What can happen is if you don't do a thorough job one can hack in through another open port and attempt to run programs to open other ports once they are inside the system. However, from the outside, its not possible to make a port accept packets when it is closed. Take a router and close all the ports, its impossible to access externally.

Like monty pointed out, routers still run software for their firewalls. However they are small compact and optimized OS's designed specifically for that purpose, and they are physically seperate from your PC. That is why they are superior to PC based firewalls.

 

[DrMatt]

Isn't that what I said?

A byte is however many bits are used to contain a minimal character of communication code, except for Chinese.
ASCII bytes are 7 bits, usually shoved into the low-order 7 bits of an 8-bit byte of hardware program code but usually transmitted over thin channels as 7 bits without the always-zero high-order bit. The high-order bit can be used as a parity check for 7-bit bytes. Program code bytes with parity will often be 9 bits, i.e. 8 bits of raw binary and a parity bit. You won't see byte widths other than 8-bit on your computer, but actual signalling uses several different codes with different width bytes optimized around different applications. Hardware compression algorithms which speed up communications on noisy channels will sometimes pack 8 7-bit bytes of ASCII in 7 8-bit hardware bytes, for a 12.5% increase in throughput, prior to attempting further compression.

People who work in the signalling world really do talk of things like this. But as far as I know, they still call the atoms of Unicode "words", not "bytes".

 

[DrMatt]

I read up a bit on PPPoE. Looks like the assumption is that once you plug your cable modem or DSL modem in, you'll want to plug a router and multiple devices into that, but you don't want to manually program the router with fixed IP addresses and routing tables each time connectivity is established, besides which your contract with the ISP may not provide for a fixed IP range for your home devices.

So, if I understand the (rather vague) documentation I found, it looks like the scheme works like this:

Between the ISP and your cable modem, the main frame type is raw PPP, and each device in your office/household looks like a port.

The modem maps Ports on the analog side to IP addresses on your LAN. Both the ports and IP addresses are supplied dynamically by your ISP.

Rather than rewriting the PPP envelope of each packet as a TCP envelope, the modem wraps the PPP packet in a TCP envelope so your router can route it, and the modem and expects your software to similarly doubly encapsulate each outgoing packet as PPP inside TCP. The TCP layer allows your router to forward the thing to the modem, and when it arrives at the modem, the modem just strips the TCP envelope off and forwards the contents on its analog side--assuming the contents are already a well-formed PPP packet.

Odd, but understandable.

 

[scribble]

I am not naive you are just paranoid. If anybody messed with my computer I could tell. With your firewall you probably can't and wouldn't. Nothing more to say to you.

Hahahaha

I love it!

So basically your security model is: let yourself get infected, assume you'll be able to tell and fix it after it happens? You should work for Microsoft. They love that garbage.

 

[Vagabond]

Hahahaha

I love it!

So basically your security model is: let yourself get infected, assume you'll be able to tell and fix it after it happens? You should work for Microsoft. They love that garbage.

No, I don't worry about my computer for the same reason I don't wear a hardhat everytime I walk outside to keep birds from crashing into my head. I have been walking around for 40+ years and never got hit by a bird. Much higher chance of the bird than your computer ever being tampered with or any actual damage being done. As I said the security you use is far far more likely to be the cause of your trouble than what you are protecting against. Also it is highly doubtful any security you are using would actually stop somebody if they knew what they were doing and wanted to get you anyway.

 

[richardm]

Also it is highly doubtful any security you are using would actually stop somebody if they knew what they were doing and wanted to get you anyway.

You may or may not be right, but what if it's not a personal attack but a worm trying to get in? Without a firewall you wouldn't even know that it had tried, much less whether it had succeeded.

 

[scribble]

Much higher chance of the bird than your computer ever being tampered with or any actual damage being done.

Show me proof. I don't believe that for a second. What statistics are you basing that on? I do believe you are "making s*** up."

Here's my counter statistics. The average Windows machine lasts LESS THAN TWENTY MINUTES on the internet before it is compromised.

Now, if you go outside and get hit by a bird more than every twenty minutes, I'd think you WOULD wear a hard hat.

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,99080,00.html?SKC=news99080

The average survival time for the systems the ISC tests has declined from about 55 minutes in the autumn of 2003 to just under 20 minutes at the end of 2004, although those figures are an improvement from a low of 15 minutes in the spring of 2004. Microsoft says survival rates for Windows should decline as Windows XP Service Pack 2 becomes more widely used...

I don't even know why I'm bothering. You proved as soon as you opened your mouth that you don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

The guys at my office got quite a laugh out of your ports comment. That was funny.

 

[Vagabond]

The guys at my office got quite a laugh out of your ports comment. That was funny.<<<<

That just proves they are morons like yourself. My computer has been hooked up to the internet for several years with no security at all and has never been compromised. You probably work for a company that makes their living preying on the overhyped danger to sell their worthless protection. Don't bother trying to insult me. I hold your opinion in no value so your lame efforts just make me laugh. Save it already.

 

[Vagabond]

You may or may not be right, but what if it's not a personal attack but a worm trying to get in? Without a firewall you wouldn't even know that it had tried, much less whether it had succeeded.

My computer is also vulnerable to being hit by a micro asteroid and being utterly destroyed but I don't protect against that either. The fact I might not be able to prevent something that is never going to happen is not an arguement for protection that isn't going to stop it anyway.

 

[Wudang]

Vagabond, please go read something about computer networking - this is embarassing. If you don't want to spend cash you can learn more than you'll ever need to know from this book
here

 

[Powa]

Vagabond, you say that your computer was never compromised. You can prove it by downloading HijackThis (if you don't already have it) and post your log here, so we can see what spyware you have on your computer (if any).

 

[Iconoclast]

And if you've had a Root Kit installed, then it's virtually impossible to find it.

 

[richardm]

stuff

Just a moment. Are we talking about a Windows machine here? That has been connected to the internet for years? With nothing between it and the big wide world?

Or are you using a different OS?

 

[Darat]

Just a moment. Are we talking about a Windows machine here? That has been connected to the internet for years? With nothing between it and the big wide world?

Or are you using a different OS?

You mean as in "wide open"?

 

[scribble]

Vagabond, you say that your computer was never compromised. You can prove it...

Just FYI, that won't prove anything.

There was a study about three months ago that showed that even if you use all three of the most popular spyware removal programs for Windows, they still only get about 95% of what's out there. So you're still likely to be infected, even when they report you're totally clean.

Windows SUCKS.

 

[Powa]

Just FYI, that won't prove anything.

There was a study about three months ago that showed that even if you use all three of the most popular spyware removal programs for Windows, they still only get about 95% of what's out there. So you're still likely to be infected, even when they report you're totally clean.

I know, but if Vagabond is connected to internet without any protection, there's just no way his computer is clean.

BTW, HijackThis shows things that Spybot S&D and AdAware miss.

Windows SUCKS.

Well, duh.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Could be he's running BeOS or Linux, which greatly lowers the risk.

Or CP/M.

 

[richardm]

Could be he's running BeOS or Linux, which greatly lowers the risk.

Or CP/M.

That's what I was wondering. Or perhaps one of those superior Mac types

 

[Darat]

That's what I was wondering. Or perhaps one of those superior Mac types

Since it's gone nonsensical.

One of those Mac OSs… "Oh never mind it's only taken us 20 years to get to anything like a decent operating system (and then we had to nick it) and never mind that nothing you bought more then a year ago will work, oh and we'll charge you another 70 quid for a "new" version with less new features then a service pack by any other decent OS vendor..." you mean one of those?



(Steps well back...)

 

[richardm]

you mean one of those?

That's them, yes

I was thinking "supercilious" rather than "better"