Have you ever been hacked?

[ulthar]

trek_geezer wrote:

> Most people don't realize that being on a cable modem is
> basically like being on a big LAN. Everyone with broadband
> should at least be behind a router that DHCP's NAT numbers to
> the PCs connected to it .
>


What does that do?  NAT rewrites source (and possibly destination) IP addresses per packet, but does nothing to the data in the packet.  It is possible to 'hijack' packets and attach data to them.  The packets fly through NAT no problem, because to NAT only the IP address is important.

The game Everquest has a popular 'crack' that kinda works like that (but in reverse).  In a sense, it is a packet monitor and nothing more, but it sits BEHIND the firewall and to the true client computer, is invisible.

Even with a firewall, if packets with data can go out, then packets with data can go in.  True, this is less common than remote access breaches via regular port scanning, but it can happen.

The only way to block this type of attack is to have only apps properly programmed with security in mind (which probably eliminates about 93% of Windows based software) .... properly validated data on function parameters, etc.

[JohnL]

Never been hacked, but then I'm using Windows 98 on dialup.

[Brother Ragnarok]

Hacking, cracking, whatever.  Just one more piece of evidence in the argument that people suck.  I have 5 or 6 of those stupid trojan and backdoor things quarantined on my computer (I was getting attacked all the time through my internet explorer, switched to Mozilla Firebird, and most of the problems stopped).  I've tried a couple of removal tools, but they didn't work.

Brother R