TECH: Firewall

[David Lininger <tss003@MAIL.CONNECT.MORE.NET>]

Colleagues:

Several of you asked which programs I'm using at home. My firewall is
ZoneAlarm (http://www.zonelabs.com/) which comes either as freeware or an
upgraded version for a fee. I'm using the free version.

The program I use in conjunction with ZoneAlarm is NeoTrace
(http://www.zonelabs.com/). Again, it has both a free version and an
upgraded fee version, and i'm using the free one. The way I'm using the two
goes like this. When ZoneAlarm alerts me to an attempted entry, it displays
the IP address the attack came from and the time. It is getting the time
from my computer's clock, so I use Atomic Clock
(http://www.worldtimeserver.com/) to keep my clock accurate. I then use
NeoTrace to track down the administrator and send an email with the IP
address and time of the attack.

As I understand what is happening, most likely someone is looking for
computers with open ports and they have a program that scans IP addresses.
Zone Alarm theoretically presents a blank wall to such searches, but then
it tells me that someone tried to get in.

The neat thing about NeoTrace is that is will display a map of the route
from you to the IP address. You can either type in the actual number or the
URL. I'm located near Springfield, Missouri, and I've seen the line go from
here to Washington, D.C. to California and back to Chicago! Sometimes it is
fun to just watch the map.



David Lininger (kb0zke), LMS
Hickory County R-1 Schools
Rt 1, Box 838
Urbana, MO 65767
(417) 993-4226
mailto: tss003@mail.connect.more.net

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