Hello everyone. This is my first post on this board. I have a few questions. ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED. Today I realized that the whole time I've had my mac, my firewall has been on "Allow all incoming connections," in other words my firewall has been off. This is very concerning to me and I wanted to know how vulnerable this makes me to being hacked. I need to make sure I havent been hacked in anyway. If I get a virus scanner and it finds nothing, is that enough to conclude I've never been hacked? Or do hackers removes trojans and keyloggers once they're done with their malicious activities? Is the only way to be hacked by downloading a dangerous file? Another question I have is what are the default settings for "Sharing" under system preferences. Are all the selections supposed to be unchecked? Such as file sharing, screen sharing, remote login etc. My computer would alert me if someone tried to gain access through any of these means right? I have a fear that since I have had my firewall down someone has been watching everything I do on my computer since I received this computer a year ago. Please help!
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How vulnerable?
- Thread starter jmakeme
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Unless you have some very sensitive data on your computer and in your possession, which I would assume you don't since you were using your computer without the firewall, you really don't need to worry about anything. A virus scanner won't do you any good, and if you don't use the internet carelessly, you don't need to worry about stuff like that.
What is it that is so sensitive?
And if you were hacked by a halfway decent hacker, good news is you'll never know.
That's why I never leave anything of value stored. I have a flash drive with all that, right under my AR-15 or Glock 27(depending if I'm out with it.)
Because hacking is not at all the same thing as a virus. Virus scans won't tell you if someone hacked your computer. Basically, if you had data that was sensitive enough to actually be worth hacking, you wouldn't be allowed to store it on a personal computer, much less one without a stiff firewall. It's pretty rare for a hacker to bother with a personal or individual computer, more often it's hacking into companies' servers, etc.
You can't. The only way you can be sure you have a clean system is to wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS.
Let's hope this time was a cheap lesson in network security.
You don't have anything that important. If you did, your employer would have provided you with encryption methods for protecting it. Personal information is small fish and it's probably all on facebook anyways.
Anti-virus software won't detect "hacking" nor will it prevent phishing or other kinds of social engineering. You'd be surprised how far the advice to "not be an idiot" goes in terms of modern attacks.
Look hackers are not out to steal your porn collection ok...
:/ sarcasm detector alert
No one would want to hack an individual computer. Trojans fill that job nicely, but if your relatively careful on the internet you can avoid them
I have U-Verse with ATT. Does this have a built in firewall? It's a 2-wire modem.
Hey I saw you were searching for recipies earlier. Considering your bank account balance, I think you should go for the filet mignon with bacon paired with merlot...
...well...if you still have a (positive) balance by the time of this posting!
Just kidding.
If you want to be really secure (or atleast better off than 95% of home users even those on these boards) then read/apply Apple's very own Security Configuration guide for OS X 10.6. For some of the items, your functionality will have to be reduced and you'll have to jump through a few extra hoops in your every day computing, but on the upside you'll have intimate knowledge of your security configuration and can rest assured that if it's difficult for you to get into your own system it'd be harder to start from scratch. Cracking difficulty is a concern for malicious users and they'll oft move on to easier targets (unless you have data they want).
...well...if you still have a (positive) balance by the time of this posting!
Just kidding.
If you want to be really secure (or atleast better off than 95% of home users even those on these boards) then read/apply Apple's very own Security Configuration guide for OS X 10.6. For some of the items, your functionality will have to be reduced and you'll have to jump through a few extra hoops in your every day computing, but on the upside you'll have intimate knowledge of your security configuration and can rest assured that if it's difficult for you to get into your own system it'd be harder to start from scratch. Cracking difficulty is a concern for malicious users and they'll oft move on to easier targets (unless you have data they want).