HOW TO PREVENT HACKING?

There are varoius tools avialabe to prevent your computer
from being hacked ,All the antivirus programs are
being constantly updated form time to time..
If you are in a big business it is always important
to keep your data secured and otherwise also ..
well, here are some of the tolls discussed have a look
at them...
1)FIREWALLS
A firewall in layman terms is essentially a program which filters
network data to decide whether or not to forward them to their
destination or to deny it.
This program is genrally present and inbuilt in all windows machine.
These programs will generally protect you from inbound “net
attacks.” This means unauthorized network request from foreign
computers will be blocked.
I cannot stress how important it is in this day and age to have a
firewall of some kind installed and “running” on your computer.
I personally recommend that you use one of the following or both
if you can.

Black Ice Defender
This is a very user-friendly comprehensive firewall program. I
highly recommend it to both advance and novice users. It has a
simple graphical interface that is easy to understand and pleasing
to the eye.
It detects your attacker, stops their attack and or scan and gives
you as much information available on the “attacker.”
You can download Black Ice Defender at:

http://www.networkice.com



Lockdown 2000
I also recommend Lockdown 2000 as a security measure.
Lockdown2000 has a very nice graphical interface to it also and is
user friendly. It does the same thing Black Ice Defender does but
also runs scans on your system for Trojans. It monitors your
registry and system files for changes that occur. Then gives you
the option of either undoing all the changes or allowing it.
You can obtain a copy of Lockdown2000 from:

http://www.lockdown2000.com


I find using both firewalls in conjunction with each other works
quite well. As they both compensate for the short-comings of the
other.

Anti Virus Software
This is also another piece of software you should by all means
have on your system. We all know it’s a necessity however we
are all guilty of not using them.
There are numerous anti-virus software out there. Norton
Antivirus and Mcafee are two of the more common ones. They
are all good and do their job. common antivirus prgrams
i would recomand are AVG,AVAST,NORTON and MCafee
You can find each of these programs at:
http://www.norton.com

http://www.mcafee.com


I personally recommend using 1 virus scanner and both firewalls.
The reason is I find Black Ice Defender blocks incoming attacks
and any system changes that occur on your system Lockdown
catches.

TIPS & TRICKS
I feel it necessary for you to pay particular attention to this
section. The above programs will function and do their job, but
that’s only half the battle.
There are certain precautions you need to take as a user to
ensure your system remains a “fortress.”


Tip #1:
For Dial Up users: If you are a dial up user then you use a
modem either internal or external kind to get online. If you have
an external modem then this tip is easy. If you look at the
modem you’ll see lights on the front of it.
When you’re doing anything on the net you’ll notice lights
blinking that indicate that you are Sending Data, and Receiving
Data. Depending on how often the lights blink and how fast they
blink gives a rough idea of how much activity is going on between
your computer and the net.
Here’s where a little perception comes into play. If you are
connected to the internet, and are just sitting by your system
doing absolutely nothing, those lights have no business to be
blinking rapidly. They will flash periodically indicating it’s
checking it’s connectivity, however there should be no heavy data
transfer of any kind if you are not doing anything on the net.
For Example: If you have your email program open and you are
just sitting there reading your mail, you may notice that every 15
sometimes 20 mins that the lights will blink back and forth
indicating it’s sending and receiving data. This is normal because
chances are you have your email program configured to check
your mail every 20 mins.
If by chance you notice the lights on your modem is blinking
consistently for let’s say a period of 2mins non stop be extremely
suspicious.
If you have an internal modem, you will not be able to see the
lights on your modem, instead you can rely on the two tv looking
icons at the bottom right corner of your screen near the clock.
They will look something like this.



Any data being sent and received will be noticed by the blinking
of the lights rapidly.

If you are on cable or dsl, the same applies. There should never
be any form of heavy data transfer of any kind from your system
to anything unless you are authorizing it. Some examples of
activity that can justify heavy data transfer are as follows:
• Legitimate Programs running that may need to access the
net occasionally. (ie, Email programs)
• If you are running an FTP server where people purposely
log into your machine to download files you have given
them access to.
• If you are downloading files off the internet

Things of that nature will generate a lot of data transfer.

Allow me to take this opportunity to explain to you another “Tool”
you should be aware of. Let’s assume you realize that there is a
lot of data being sent and received from your machine and you’re
not even sitting at it.
How do you know what’s going on?
Let’s do a short exercise.
• Click Start
• Go to Run (Click Run)
• Type Command
• Click OK

Again you should get a screen that looks like this.

Once you have this screen type the following:
• Netstat –a
This command will give you a listing of everything your
computer is communicating with online currently.
The list you get will look something like this:
Active Connections
Protocol Local Address Foreign Address State
TCP COMP: 0000 10.0.0.1 : 0000 ESTABLISHED
TCP COMP:2020 10.0.0.5 : 1010 ESTABLISHED
TCP COMP:9090 10.0.0.3 : 1918 ESTABLISHED

You’ll see a variety of listings like the above. It will give you the
Protocal being used, the local address (your computer) and what
port on your computer the “Foreign Address” is being connected
to and the (State) of which the (Foreign Address) is. For
example if it is (Established) then that means whatever the
foreign address says is currently connected to your machine.
There is software available that will show you this information
without typing all those commands.
The name of the software is called Xnetstat, you can obtain a
copy of it from here:
http://www.arez.com/fs/xns/

If for whatever reason you believe you are sending and receiving
a lot of data then it is wise to do a netstat –a to see what is
connected to your computer and at what ports.

Protecting Shared Resources
For those of you who have internal networks between two
computers probably have a shared resource of some kind. Earlier
in this manual I showed you how to find what is being shared.
Let’s have a look at how to protect those shared resources.
• Click Start
• Scroll up to Programs
• Go to Windows Explorer (Click on it)

Once you have done this you should see a window that comes up
with a bunch of folders listed on the left and more folders listed
on the right.
Scroll through the listing and look for whatever shared files you
have. For a refresher the folder will look like this.

Once you have found those folders you must now protect them.
• Click on The folder (once) so it is highlighted
• Use the right mouse button, (the one closest to your pinky
finger) and click on the folder.
You will get a menu:

Your menu may look different than mine, but what you’re looking
for is the word “sharing.”


When you click on Sharing you will see another window that looks
like the following.

This is where you can either share this folder or turn it off. If you
wish to turn off the sharing you would select (Not Shared).

If you must share a folder then follows these steps. This will
make the folder read only. That means no one can delete
anything from those folders if they were to break into your
system using a “Netbios” attack.

The next step is to password protect the directory.

Once you type in the password click (OK) and you’re done.
My personal suggestion is to set any directory you are sharing to
(Read Only) and password protect it. This is only if you must
share resources.