Protecting Your Computer
Computer using Windows Operating System (OS) is very risk to be attacked in many ways and not just with viruses, worm, or Trojan horses (called Trojan). Another popular way's to attack Windows Computer System is to attempt to communicate to it over any of the network "ports" found on Windows Computers. These ports are kind of like TV Channels or radio frequencies. Computer are set up to listen for messages that may arrive from other computers and storage media (CD-Rom, USB Port, etc)--this is how they communicate with one another.
How Firewalls work
Firewalls monitor all the commnication between your computer and the internet. Firewalls know what of comunication are allowed to flow in and out. They know this because they have something called "access control list"-a list of rule that specify precisely what kinds of communications are allowed and what kinds are blocked. The firewalls made for the consumer market (that's us) are ussually preconfigurated to offer maximum protection right out of the box.
The configuration required to facilitate communication between two computers in a home network makes them highly vulnerable to attactk from any computer on the Internet.
To turn your computer into a tattletale zombie, all anyone on the internet needs to do is send a specially tailored message from their computer one of yours-oven one of the open port.
Whether the firewall is hardware device connected to your nework, or a software program in your computer. A firewall will automatically block all unwanted network communication that you need to use your computer. There are principal types of firewalls; Hardware and Software.
A Hardware firewall is a device connected to the network in such a way that all communications betwen any computer and Internet must pass through the firewall and be examined to see whether they should be discarded or allowed to pass through. A Software firewall is a program that runs on a computer and performs the same type of examination of network communications that hardware firewall does. But where a hardware firewall can protect all of the computer network, a software firewall only protect the computer is running on.
How Firewalls work
Firewalls monitor all the commnication between your computer and the internet. Firewalls know what of comunication are allowed to flow in and out. They know this because they have something called "access control list"-a list of rule that specify precisely what kinds of communications are allowed and what kinds are blocked. The firewalls made for the consumer market (that's us) are ussually preconfigurated to offer maximum protection right out of the box.
The configuration required to facilitate communication between two computers in a home network makes them highly vulnerable to attactk from any computer on the Internet.
To turn your computer into a tattletale zombie, all anyone on the internet needs to do is send a specially tailored message from their computer one of yours-oven one of the open port.
Whether the firewall is hardware device connected to your nework, or a software program in your computer. A firewall will automatically block all unwanted network communication that you need to use your computer. There are principal types of firewalls; Hardware and Software.
A Hardware firewall is a device connected to the network in such a way that all communications betwen any computer and Internet must pass through the firewall and be examined to see whether they should be discarded or allowed to pass through. A Software firewall is a program that runs on a computer and performs the same type of examination of network communications that hardware firewall does. But where a hardware firewall can protect all of the computer network, a software firewall only protect the computer is running on.
