Legality of target practice

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i really need help here......its getting bad. i cant even scan for viruses!

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If your local virus scan won't work... try a free online one here.

If you think that you have ports open, and you want to see what ports they are and what those ports are used for... try grc.com's shields up test .

Foundstone has a cool program called fport, and that will tell you what programs and what ports they are listening on. Active ports is also a good one and will provide you with real time activity.

If you do a google search, most of the time you can tell what is trying to access the internet. Programs such as subseven can be customized to the attackers needs... so your tests could be inconclusive.

There are others, like symantecs vulnerablility test.

If you want to give out your ip, and have some of us test it... we can do that too. You're best bet would be to ask people in IRC if you are on dial up, cause your IP changes all the time.

To keep your IP the same, you can register and install a program like dyndns.org and have it update your IP with a DNS server. That name you can choose, and no matter what your IP changes to, people will be able to find your PC.

I think your best bet would be to try the virus scan. If you come up with something, backup your data and then format and reinstall.

If you were to install a free firewall, like zonealarm, you can see if something is trying to access the internet or what is listening, and deny access.

As to legal matters..

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IMHO. It's up to you to protect your computer from attscks

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In most cases... there isn't much you can do. You are not a big swinging company with good lawyers, and in the scheme of things, you are a small fish in this "game". You can report them to your ISP, but most of the time, they won't do anything for you.

Keep us posted on what is going on. Maybe we can answer some more ?s for you.

1. If you just want to clean your computer, try to run your computer in safe mode and try checking various startup methods for trojans- look in the registry run, win.ini, etc. usually running a virus scanner in safe mode will work, then rebooting into safe mode and rescanning.
2. If you want to catch them and file charges, get a firewall up, wait until you log their ip. save a screen shot and the log for the firewall. might also want to save a screenshot of netstat -a or netstat -an if you are sure their connected, youll have their ip address in that.
3. use www.samspade.org to find out who owns the ip block that the attack came from. if you dowlnload the same spade tool, just put the ip address into the box and hit the "ipblock" button and it will tell you who owns it. then you'll have to contact the abuse department or technical contact, telling them what evidence you have of their clients entry into your system. make sure you keep track of the time of each connection.

4. ive never had to do any of this before, but that should get you good enough evidence or at least a jumping board for what you want to do. i hope some of that helps...