Is Your Firewall Full of Holes
By Leo Notenboom
Firewalls are a critical line of defense against ‘internet-initiated connections’ – but other types of malware demand additional protection.–PC Pitstop
Firewalls and security software are important tools to keep your computer safe. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as perfect protection from the variety of threats on the internet.
The other day, my wife was looking at a website when suddenly she was hit with the System Progressive Protection virus. She never even clicked on a link! We shut her machine down, and I went on the internet and found what seemed to be a reasonable site describing how to get rid of it. After many steps, I think I did.
My wife then asked me how did this virus get through? We have a firewall through the router and she had Microsoft Security Essentials running.
Firewalls only protect you from internet-initiated connections – the kind that other computers out on the internet try to make to yours.
That protection’s important. Some malware constantly tries to connect to random IP addresses on the internet. Once connected, the malware attempts to exploit vulnerabilities. A firewall prevents that connection from happening.
If your router has a log, it’s interesting to see how many random connections are attempted from the outside.
What happened to you wasn’t that kind of malware.
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This excerpt appears with permission from Leo Notenboom.
