OT: Hacker Attempt?

[capnq]

Finding your log files is easy: Start/Find/Files or Folders/Files named *.log (assuming some flavor of Windows).

Interpreting the logs is another matter. For several of the 48 files that search finds on my system, I don't know what program created the log.

[Atrocities]

I ran a HiJack this and posted the report on the security forums. From the looks of it there isn't anything there that wasn't there in my last "ok" report. I think this just might have been a fluke thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't occur again. Thank you all for your insight and posts.

[Renegade 13]

Personally, I'd guess a power bump was the cause of the reboot. Last night, we had a bit of a power blip that wasn't even enough to hit the electronic clocks, but was enough to kill both the PC's in the house. Computers are much more sensitive to minor power blips that would otherwise go unnoticed by things like lights, clocks, etc. Also, I'd suspect a power blip, due to the huge winds from last night, assuming you got them along the Oregon coast like the BC coast did.

As for the rest, no idea

[Atrocities]

I wonder if the expense of having a battery back up would be worth it? IF the power spikes the battery unit would hopefully protect the PC and if the power fails then the BBU would hopefully provide enough time to properly power down the PC.

[Fyron]

If you have a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) that regulates voltage levels, you have 0 need to worry about little power spikes. You can get tolerable ones for around $40; well worth the investment.

If you attach it's USB cord to your PC, Windows will manage it as a battery and automatically shut down after the AC power is cut, and the UPS runs low on juice.

[NullAshton]

An UPS is worth the investment. They stay up for several minutes after the power goes out, meaning you can stay on the computer(and internet usually) for a while uninterrupted after the power goes out. For small blips, which are much more common than longer outages, they let you simply ignore them, which is really nice.

[frightlever]

A router probably isn't necessary (though nice to have) - Slashdot linked an article today about the most secure firewalls and Jetico + Comodo were 2 of the top ones and both are free. I think Comodo came no. 1. I believe the theory is that a decent firewall will prevent you from being "visible" on the internet so someone isn't able to latch onto you for extended probing because when they're scanning IP addresses your PC should act as if nobody's home at the IP address it's using. I've been using filseclab up til now and it scored REALLY poorly so I think I'll be switching to Comodo. Haven't checked to see how heinous either of their user agreements are yet so use your own discretion.

[Fyron]

1 layer of defense is always less secure than 2 (properly configured) layers.

[Arralen]

frightlever said:
A router probably isn't necessary (though nice to have) - Slashdot linked an article today about the most secure firewalls and Jetico + Comodo were 2 of the top ones and both are free.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/12/1444251
http://www.matousec.com/projects/win...ts-results.php

The test isn't worth the electrons used for it, though:
They tested for "leakyness", not safety.
This is a fundamental error:

A) They used their own software-tools to test if something can get out from the 'protected' machine. If those tools have any resemblance to real threats, who knows? If they had infected their machines with real, up-to-date viruses and trojans and had scanned the in- and outgoing traffic for 'unauthorized' data (using a proxy with network card in promiscous mode), this would have made at least some sense.

B) If some malware tries to 'phone home' from your system, your security has already been breached and all safety measures failed: As you cannot reliably scan for infection with a virus scanner from the PC in question itself, you can't really keep any malware from doing whatever it wants (phone home, bring in some ads, whatever) because your OS is compromised, and there's no layer 'below' it that could control what its doing.
In fact, there are trojans in devlopment which move the whole operating system into some kind of virtual machine - where it will not and cannot ever know that it's in fact run under the control of a virus/trojan!!

C) Therefore, you don't need a personal firewall to keep something in, you need it to keep everything out if you're running windows, because that OS can't differentiate between internet and local network connections and offers all services to both nets (*) - what is a bad idea considering the fact that most of them are buggy and can be used to take over the machine.
(*this has changed with XP service pack 2, though: the integrated firewall closes all those services off from the internet. Therefore, with XPsp2 you don't need a seperate personal firewall unless you have very special demands)

D) A router is a better solution in 98% of cases, because if configured correctly it will simply throw away all data that your machine hasn't explicitly requested. To get infected, you must (more or less) run some malware yourself - keep in mind, though, that some security holes in browsers and mailprogramms allow for automated code execution if you open the 'wrong' website or mail. Internet Exploder and Outlook (Express) are especially prone to this, unless you turn off all their 'great' features, and even then to some degree.

[Atrocities]

Does any one have a link to the Security Forums?