What are the risks

Im just wondering what are the risks to the normal user of getting hacked. I guess most of you here are all systems admins etc so need major security so thats why your mega secure.
What got me thinking was that somebody today ( a friend ) complimented me on my firewall, saying it was good etc ..i think the was port scanning. But the only firewall i had on that pc was the standard xp one! So do certain isp's or modems offer more security than others or is it just because i keep tabs on what i download and what i have running that keeps me from leaving myself open to attack. Does the average user really need a mega firewall as what would be the point of some stranger going to the effort of hacking them when they can most likley find somebody with a trojan installed to hack.

hmm i think that make sence :rolleyes:

If someone really wants to hack you, they will. Nevertheless, your everyday script kiddies, most likely do not posses the true knowledge to really hack you. What they posses is lite reading skills and downloading skills. Downloading tools coded by others and using them, after which they run around screaming they are true hackers. So if you run a poperly configured firewall you'll be ok.

You asked what would the effort be for someone were to "hack" a system when they could get trojans..... Well there isn't much of a different between someone telneting you & useing a trojan. The only difference is that a trojan would automaticly open ports & they have features to pull pranks but trojans can't really look for weaknesses as good as it's owner so some of the smarter s.kiddies will often scan you and take a good look around before mindlessly fooling with your system.

P.S. what makes you think that a type of ISP and modem will really protect you? Your ISP will slightly protect you from harm but ISP dudes are often lazy. And as for modems and stuff.... a 56K connection should be fine considering the fact that high speed connections are lightning rods for attacks

Security isint just for the big networks, everyone should be proavtive really. I entry level firewall and antivirus program at the very lease will make your machine a little less vulernable. The main risk, as I see it, would be having your system hijacked and used as an attacker in a DDOS attack, and nobody wants to play party, either intentionally or otherwise to that kind of crap.

Hey, I have that same xp firewall and i dont like it because i have to shut it down anytime i want to send a file on msn messenger. Does anyone have a suggestion of a good firewall for a user working on a small home network? Thanks
-Spark

spark,
ive been using tiny personal firewall for over a year now and havnt had any problems with it, the only problem i had was when i put it on every computer on a home network by mistake and suddenly no-one could see anyone else, so i put it on the system that connects to the web and everything was good, only little difficulty was trying to set up netbios to work correctly over it, that was a pain to get right

i think the new version has auto detection and setup for some parts of netbios though.

Thanks for the info mrleachy, I'll check into it asap and see if i like it. I've also been wondering if the new mcafee firewall is worth messin around with. If anybody has any input about that id be glad to hear it. ;) Thanks all.
-Spark