Norton Anti-Virus Notifications

[btc]

Having owned Macs for a considerable amount of time now has left me pretty ignorant about Virus, anti-Virus, Malware, etc.

I just haven't needed to know because Macs don't seem to be affected in any way.

However I want to make sure that anything I send to my PC owning friends is OK, so I installed Norton Anti-Virus for Mac 11.

I'm not having any virus problems, but the program has a feature called "Vulnerability Protection" which notifies me at least seven to ten times a day that someone is doing or at least attempting to do a "portscan."

Each time it happens it says "Vulnerability Blocked." which I assume means it blocked the attempt to find a way into my computer.

It is just one or two addresses that these scans come from: The last one was hn.kd.ny.adsl, before that it was 58.218.204.110

help a newbie out here: I don't know what this means, how vulnerable I am...or whatever...

The first few times I did a complete scan of the entire computer with the latest virus definitions and came up with nothing, no virus, etc.

Is there something happening that Norton doesn't check for, could there be something going on in my computer now as a result of these portscans?

oh, in case it matters, this is a MDD G4 with 2 x 1GHz processors running OS 10.4.11

Thanks,

Jim

 

[LPZ]

Assuming the notification is valid, it means that someone scanned your computer to determine what ports ("communication channels") were open. (For example, port 80 would be open if you were running a web server.)

No big deal. I assume you have the Firewall enabled in System Preferences Security, and that you don't have unneeded stuff enabled in System Preferences Sharing?

You can test what ports are open on your computer with the Network Utility in your Utilities folder. Select Port Scan and type localhost (or 127.0.0.1) into the IP Address box. Here's what I got:

Port Scan has started…

Port Scanning host: 127.0.0.1

	 Open TCP Port: 	88     		kerberos
	 Open TCP Port: 	548    		afpovertcp
	 Open TCP Port: 	631    		ipp
	 Open TCP Port: 	2968   		enpp
Port Scan has completed…

Last comment---Norton software is a source of problems on Macs. I'd get rid of it completely and let my Windows-using friends fend for themselves.

 

[fcortese]

Assuming the notification is valid, it means that someone scanned your computer to determine what ports ("communication channels") were open. (For example, port 80 would be open if you were running a web server.)

No big deal. I assume you have the Firewall enabled in System Preferences Security, and that you don't have unneeded stuff enabled in System Preferences Sharing?

You can test what ports are open on your computer with the Network Utility in your Utilities folder. Select Port Scan and type localhost (or 127.0.0.1) into the IP Address box. Here's what I got:

Port Scan has started…

Port Scanning host: 127.0.0.1

	 Open TCP Port: 	88     		kerberos
	 Open TCP Port: 	548    		afpovertcp
	 Open TCP Port: 	631    		ipp
	 Open TCP Port: 	2968   		enpp
Port Scan has completed…

Last comment---Norton software is a source of problems on Macs. I'd get rid of it completely and let my Windows-using friends fend for themselves.

+1 Totally agree

 

[GGJstudios]

Last comment---Norton software is a source of problems on Macs. I'd get rid of it completely and let my Windows-using friends fend for themselves.

I agree. It's not a Mac user's responsibility to protect Windows users from viruses. Every Windows user should be running their own AV. If they're not, they have a much greater risk of infection from other sources than from a Mac user sending them files.

 

[btc]

thanks for the advice, my fellow Macaholics