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hi ,
just wanted to conform something a story or incident rather.my friend told me that
once surfing in a chat room across a person who informed him that his ports were open
and could be hacked .he was amazed and he asked him how?
in ans to that the person moved inside his system and changed his destop back image.
my friend was using `98 or`2000 im not sure .but can a hacker change my background
picture ? if yes than how.
please apprise me.
thanks.
Yes and go search google... I can ensure you that no one here is going to tell you how to do it...
its easy to see if someones ports r open in a chatroom...just get they're IP address and do a port scan...but connecting and actually gaining access to the pc is a diff. story. I'm guessin he had a trojan or a huge vuln. or something. Does he have a virus scanner?
what your friend and what you should do is go and get a firewall Zonealarm is free you can get it here www.zonealarm.com. and never accept files from anyone on irc no matter what they tell you and if they tell you to type in a command that you don't know what it does don't type it in.
definitely yes! a hacker can do that. how? perhaps the hacker did use some toy progie. what progie? that i wont tell you. but take what DeadAddict said, go get a firewall and also include some antivirus with updated virus definition ofcourse. a hacker cant just simply penetrate your machine if your well protected.
what your friend suggested happened is all to easy. the hard part would be to make the changes take affect right away. For this reason i have doubts. Try it on your own computer. rename the image for your bkground and rename some other image with the original name. it could be done with a vb script of course, but your discription doesn't suggest that. mapping a remote computer would easiely allow you to rename files but it would take a terminal program or WMI tool to execute the vb script locally on the remote machine. thats allot just to say "your ports are showing!"
most likely your friend heard the store and decided it would be cool to tell it. telling him to scan his box for trojans, update virus sigs and get a FW wouldn't hurt wether the story is true or false.
If I may say it is also possible that the computer in question, was infected with some sort of a trojan. IE the port scan, just a scanner looking for trojans. Got lucky, and already had a backdoor into the pc. Now as far as the background change immediatley, I haven't ever been able to get this to work with a trojan. Folders, icons, changing your tail on your mouse pointer, stuff like this is also possible. Usually these types of hacks require a reboot.
For your own security may I suggest you spend 50$ and buy Norton Internet Suite. This has a virus scanner, IDS, Firewall, popup blocker, and a content blocker. Plus you get free updates for a year. Not to say that any of the aforementioned methods aren't valid. I just prefer the option for support if I ever need it.
It is also very important that you download and install all applicable update for the OS. If you are running microsoft( my guess would say yes), then you need them, BADLY.
My 2 cents.
Be safe and stay free
Let me guess......... Netbios ports open to the world and no administrator password.....(if he's using w2k).
Bad mistake.....Takes about 3 seconds to get into a system like that.
Do what everybody does:
1) set a password on the administrator account (and don't use admin or something similar as a password. Choose wisely).
2) Install a personal firewall (look around here. There are a alot of threads covering this).
3) Install a good virusscanner (again look around here, has been covered a few times).
4) Run Windows Update on a regular basis.
This should get him/you started.
of course....u scan for some trojan....
ask ur buddy to keep himself updated...and install a firewall as prposed by many...adn DONT FORGET TO INSTALL THE PATCHES that M$ issues....they are there for a reason....
ssshhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! may be dcom exploited ;)
SirDice that does sound like the most likely scenerio but the changes wouldn't activate until re-boot