I had no idea how exposed I am

[middleclass]

I recently installed firestarter and after some putzing got it working and logging "hits". *I'm amazed at how often my system is being querried by unknown persons. *It's averaging at *2 Code Red Worm hits an hour plus frequent other access attempts that I haven't identified yet. *Fortunetly I'm not running windows!

[korn]

I am not sure what firestarter is but you should try portsentry and logcheck. Great tools....At the height of the code red/nimda virus I was getting 2 or 3 hits every minute!

[Ashcrow]

I'd recomend streaming some of your logs to a terminal or terminals so you can watch them in real time. It can be fun and educational.

[stryder144]

I'd recomend streaming some of your logs to a terminal or terminals so you can watch them in real time. It can be fun and educational.

How do you stream the logs to a terminal?

[Ashcrow]

You add a duplicate entery to your syslogd.conf like *.X /dev/tty8 if you want to X messages streamed to tty8.

[stryder144]

You add a duplicate entery to your syslogd.conf like *.X * * /dev/tty8 if you want to X messages streamed to tty8.

Thanks. I will play with my syslogd.conf later today.

[binary_boy]

or you could just open a terminal and do:

tail -f /var/log/messages (or syslog)

[CP]

If I am using Dial-up access will I need to set up anything like this?

[cage47]

Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone, but firewalling for this reason is not necessary since the viruses seek ip addresses and with a dialup, you don't have an ip address per se, the ISP does. It's necessary for direct connections like dsl since you are assigned an ip address. At least this is how I understood how it was explained to me.

[gorn]

you still have an ip address it's just dynamic as in it changes all the time

your just as vulnerable except your not as wanted, who needs a 56k computer whos ip changes?

still you should be secure though.