Firewalls FAQ

• What is a firewall?
• What do firewalls protect you from?

What is a firewall?
A firewall is a guard between you and the internet, this can be either a software or hardware firewall. It regulates access of program between you and the internet.

Firewall protection is very useful and very necessary for users who are always connected to the internet. Users with DSL and Cable connections are more prone to hackers. Firewalls work in the background controlling inbound and outbound traffic and notifies the user of any intrusion attempts on their system.

It is generally believed that in the future firewalls will be standard issue in all new home computers. They are also developing a method for firewall software to be implanted into DSL and Cable modem chips.

In addition to a good firewall you should also install a good virus scanner and keep it up to date with the latest virus information. A virus scanner with a firewall will reduce your risk of being hacked or virused and help keep both you and your system secure.

The way firewalls work is: Software: The program is installed onto your computer to control access between your computer and the internet. Hardware: This is a piece of equipment that connects to the outside of your computer. The Hardware Firewall (Router) Connects to your DSL/Cable modem then to the internet giving you the most protection.

If you have multiple computer connecting to the internet you can connect them threw the Router as it has a built in hub and ethernet adapters built in.

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What do firewalls protect you from?
There are many routes that hackers can take advantage of to gain access to unprotected systems such as:

Remote Login - This is when somebody can log into your computer to access files to actually running programs on your computer.

Application Backdoors - Some programs contain ways to access your programs remotely. Others have bugs in the program that open backdoors, or hidden access that can allow remote access to these programs.

SMTP Session Hijacking - SMTP(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This is the most popular way of transferring email over the internet. Hackers often gain access to peoples email address. A person can send unsolicited junk email(spam) to thousands of people using a person's host without them even being aware of this and it makes it very difficult to trace the origin of the emails.

Operating System Bugs: Like applications, some Operation Systems have backdoors, which can allow hackers to gain access to them.

Denial of Service (DDOS): This type of attack is very hard to control. What a hacker does is send a msg to the victim's computer to make a connection, but when the answer is responded to the computer is unable to find the system. By causing a server to try to respond to these unanswered requests it will cause the system to slow down or eventually crash.

Email Bombs: These attacks are mostly personal attacks. Somebody sends you hundreds of the same email filling up you email account until you cannot accept any more emails.

Macros: Many applications allow you to make commands to help you control specific software more easily. Hackers take advantage of this by creating their own macros that will corrupt data or crash your computer.

Viruses: Probably the most well known and still one of the largest threats to computers is a virus. A virus is a small program that will copy onto your system then copy from system to system very quickly. Viruses range from harmless messages to destroying all of your data.

Spam: Spam is typically harmless junkmail. Unfortunately some junk mail can be very dangerous if you click on one of the links provided. If click on one of these links you can accidentally accept a cookie that will open a backdoor to your computer.

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