hacked?

i own a dell system (poor me) that is connected to the net via a cable modem. lately i have noticed that it is considerably slower than when I first got hooked up. At first I thought it was due to so much info in the hard drive that when i tried to access a web page the computer was serching it's memory for recent info from that page. After dumping all stored info, it was still slow. A friend told me that it is real easy to hack a cable connected system, and i should disconnect the modem power source at night, having done this and reconnecting in the morning, wow what a difference. for about two or three minutes, then right back to crazy slow. any ideas? I feel like Im back to a dial up connection again. Is there anyway to find out who (if any) has been into my system?

Do you have Norton?MCafee and update them regularly?
And do you use a firewall?
Those are the 2 things that could stop your problem.

i do run norton, 2001 and it's updated every 48 hrs. I am new to the cp world. the last time i had a keyboard in front of me, the Commodore 64 was huge and the tandy trs80 was my favorite toy. Lots has changed since then. Antionline forums have pointed me to alot of stuff like zone alarm etc. I have tried to install zone alarm but it keeps failing. currently reading a Samspade.org article that says it's crap anyways so back to square one. Have I been hacked? Or is my isp just turning the volume down?

it's hard 2 figure out where to start..
From your post it appears your using a micro$oft OS (which version?), the best start would be to back up your data & re-install from scratch (if you have been compromised then anything could be lurking on your machine) and this could also cause problems trying to identify what’s going on.
After a clean re-install (from CD media not from local copy if possible) then install anti-virus s/w then a personal firewall (limited protection but better than nothing)
If you do this you will minimise the potential from abuse, it may also be a good time to look at a hardware firewall (such as the Linksys router / firewall).

Hope this helps,

Jamie.
:cool:

There is nothin wrong with ZOnealarm, Tooleaky has proven a vulnerability but that has nothing to do with the firewall but with M$.
They need to fix the problem, besides chances that a trojan can bypass yer firewall without being detected earlier by Norton (that is if you aint using an outdated version) are small.

Is it always the same time of day??? And what kind of modem?

all I can say is that if you are not running a firewall then you did get hacked. My recommendation is to back up only important files that you need and format and do a clean install. before you hook it back up to the net install ZA and a virus scan with the newest updates.

You could also try and do defrag.

i tried to defrag, would not pass 1 %. did some internal surfin, found "js exploit" in my ie5 files. i've deleted tsaid exploit and lifeapears normal. I will know more as time passes. Thanks for everyone's help and advice it's amazing how fast you guys responded. Nice to know that in the " cold and impersonal misinformation highway" there are groups such as yourselves to help us newbies out.
CHEERS TO Y'ALL

DaWG

check w/your cable provider as well... I used RoadRunner in northern VA, they (of course) oversold subsriptions, and the network suffered. Packet loss was up around 5-6% during peak hours... I got about 5-10k a sec downloads.

you should run a tracert to yahoo.com or some other external site, and check the latency @ each hop. If the hop is internal to your cable providers network, then that is your problem.

keep your virus software up to date, don't run any executable attachments, and don't run any servers on your machine, you should be in pretty good shape.

-goose

yeah... as a cable modem user, your system will run slower at different times of day, depepnding on how many people are online. if they don't have enough servers or enough bandwidth, your connection will suffer.

Quote:

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Originally posted by lord_darkside_x
yeah... as a cable modem user, your system will run slower at different times of day, depepnding on how many people are online. if they don't have enough servers or enough bandwidth, your connection will suffer.

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I work for a Phone/Cable Company, that's why I asked about time. We (they) wont spend the money to add more OS3's, so it causes slow downs at peak times, with dial-up or cable modems....sorry I just work for them but the money customers are bank's and people like that who use it during the day and they get treated different... :p

first of what OS are you running? OK now on to the defrag, first we can start by cleaning your system up, by removeing Cookies, History, if you have AOL go into the start goto programs/aol system info/utilitys/clear cache. next into your internet explorer/tools/internet options/delete temp files and history. now pull up your system scan and do a full scan of your system for problems. now for the defrag go into the propertys or advanced and change it so it will defrag without a write test. make sure you turn off your screen saver and other things you can disable in your open programs in the lower right hand corner of screen. secret with being woth cable when you get off line or shut down for more than 4 hours you are asigned a new IP. Maybe you have a back door orifis like subseven or even pc anywhere is one try removeing those if you are not needing pc anywhere nother thing is closeing ports to your NetBios by restricting the printer share files. thats ports 139 and 445 out of the way. well hope that helps you out. got to go.

Here ya go: Go to WWW.markusjansson.net/eienbid.html and follow his Internet Explorer security settings. Manually clearing your cookies and files will not clear them all he (markus) as a download to help, but entering the following in your Autoexec.bat file will really do the trick. For win95/98
1. Open Autoexec.bat with notepad.
2. Add the following inside of the Autoexec.bat file, just prior to the last line.
deltree/Y c:\windows\history\
deltree/Y c:\windows\cookies\
deltree/Y c:\windows\tempor~1\
now save it.
2b. For winMe
make file xxx.bat
add the very same lines as the above example.
save it in C:\
open "my computer"
pick the xxx.bat file, choose properties, program, and enable "close on exit".
run regedit and go to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE_SOFTWARE\Microsoft\windows\CurrentVersion\Run
and "new-string value" [name it to:"XXX"] set value to "c:\xxx.bat". Close regedit. Done.


Not sure how to do same for win2000 or Xp.
I have culled the info from an older version of the markusjansson site, here is the credit due Markus. Please note that the first time you restart it will take quite a while to del the files. One good thing it will clear all files at the initial boot time. If your troubles continue with ZA try the Tiny firewall not sure of the web site, do a google :D I hope this will help, with an AV in place and a firewall configured correctly you should be fairly tight.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by va_goose
check w/your cable provider as well... I used RoadRunner in northern VA, they (of course) oversold subsriptions, and the network suffered. Packet loss was up around 5-6% during peak hours... I got about 5-10k a sec downloads.

you should run a tracert to yahoo.com or some other external site, and check the latency @ each hop. If the hop is internal to your cable providers network, then that is your problem.

keep your virus software up to date, don't run any executable attachments, and don't run any servers on your machine, you should be in pretty good shape.

-goose

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I completely agree here. It doesn't even sound like a virus issue, it simply sounds like you have a crappy isp
I had Rogers cable for a couple of months. I also live in a nice complex of townhouses with about 300 other
university students......conclusion, 300+ people using cable internet and tv. I was downloading at about 2-3 K/sec
I mean it was slower and less reliable than dial-up...hence why I switched to dsl

Hmm, I have yet to use 2000/XP, from your starup batchfile tutorial, it appears that they've done away with autoexec and it's kin...too bad.

just a quick post.. I would run netstat /n from a command prompt, look for any unusal connectoin on an unusal port. Find something strange do a search on the IP to find out more info..

also maybe update your driver for the cable modem.

Oh yea, you got some ballz to running a computer with a cable connection with no firewall. Its a little more costly but i would just go out and by a router with a hardware firewall.. I feal more safe with a hardware firewall... And if you wanna really get secure go to Good will and buy an old computer and put some form of *nix on it and set it up for IP Routing and use the *nix box as your firewall / proxy. If set up properly the only one that should be noticed on the web is the *nix box.... I think even someone here may have wrote a turorial on that..

if low on cash at least get a software firewall suck as tiny personal firewall, black ice, sygate, zone alarm hell put norton on there if you have to but i would recomend getting something and quick....Your computer is like stagnet water right now, attracting all sorts of pesky life forms

HeyDumbdawg:
My computers all use NAV 7.0 (2001). If I want want any of them to run faster, I can disable the auto-protect feature of Norton. This *temporary* adjustment may work for you.

Sometimes the cable modem computer is *much* slower than the dial-up PC. IMO, the cause has to do with the cable network & not the computer.

That is my $.02 worth.