GuruNews, Volume 8 Number 31, 8-28-08

Thu Aug 28 20:46:57 EDT 2008

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Vol. 8, No. 31                 

8-28-08

1 Ports and firewalls        

2 Ports?       

3 Google finger, Chinese iTunes, patent nonsense, Apple hackers

4 Office security

5 Heat 

I've gone through the basics of the Internet over the last few weeks and hopefully a few of you gained a better understanding, but this week I want to get a bit more specific.

All the data packets bouncing around need to know where to go and last week's example assumed you were still "on the phone".  In other words a browser or client program on your computer requested the data and is present and waiting for an answer.

What happens if you aren't there?  

For that matter, how does the data find you again even if you are there?  The answer is ports.  Imagine working for a large corporation with a common phone number and each employee and department has different extensions.  The phone number is the IP address (but you know that by now) and the port is your extension.

There are 65,536 ports, but the first 1025 are reserved.  Those "extensions" are assigned to things like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, FTP, Telnet etc.  Non-Windows browsers and email clients also fall within this group. 

One of the main things a firewall does is guard ports.  It closes nearly all of them but the common ports.  As examples POP and SMTP clients (incoming and outgoing email) use ports 110 and 25.  HTTP (web browsers) use port 80, IRC (Internet Relay Chat, the protocol we use for our chatroom) uses port 194 and so on.

Ports are critical to the operation of the Internet but they are also a weak point.  If unused ports on your PC aren't closed things crawling around the Internet can get in and exploit any security problems they find.

Programs will attempt to open the ports they use as you start them, hence the messages you'll sometimes see from a firewall program that warns that this program or that program is trying to access the Internet and asks for permission.

This is the main reason I've not suggested software firewalls for end users until recently because they often ask about access for common Windows components.  If you block those you're locked off the Internet.

Modern firewalls have built in permissions for the core Windows components so it's not so much a problem now, although some Critical Updates may change those components and trigger the firewall caution.

Since firewalls that monitor egress and well as ingress well keep records of the size, name and date modified on processes that connect to the Internet.   They by default distrust programs that don't mach what they have on file.

So basically if you get questions about access right after a Windows update or after you've installed a new program it's generally OK to always allow the connection.  If something just pops up out of the blue make a note of the file name and block it, just don't block it permanently.

Ask a techie friend, ask us through the webform at www.thepcgurus.net or ask one of us to using the email addresses you may have saved.  It doesn't matter how or who you ask as long as they can positively identify what it is and tell you whether it's safe or not.

If it's not safe, the next time it pops up put in the permanent ban list and call it good.

A handy tool to check your ports can be found at http://tinyurl.com/66vf2z.  It will check for vulnerabilities exploited by common malware and point out possible problems you need to address.

Thanks to JP for this week's analogy.

Until next week.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

New 'Google Suggest' tells you where to go:

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/007582.html 

Apple's iTunes online music store was available Tuesday in China after apparently being blocked by the government.  Mao, Lenin and Che could not be reached for comment:

http://tinyurl.com/6yaaro 

A patent holding company that has won settlements from Apple, AT&T, and others sued Google, Verizon, and a handful of other companies on Tuesday for allegedly infringing on patents related to voice mail.  In most nations, a "patent holding company" is also known as a "law firm":

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10026165-94.html 

Itself attacked for allegedly violating Apple's licenses, Psystar made offense its best defense on Tuesday when it filed a countering lawsuit in federal court, accusing the Mac maker of unfairly squeezing out possible rivals:

http://tinyurl.com/589xrt 

Copy us on the good stuff!

Matthew Dattilo

thepcgurus at gmail.com 

www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

Every time you create a Word document, you leave a trail of information that can be traced.  SendShield wipes those files clean, if you wish.  Here's what PCWorld has to say about this app:

"Microsoft Office documents contain plenty of private information you'd rather the world not see, such as hidden text, names of author documents, revision history and markup, hidden cells, and hidden spreadsheets. People can easily find all that information without much work. What to do? Get SendShield, an excellent, simple-to-use freebie. Whenever you send a Microsoft Office document using Outlook, SendShield looks inside the document for private information, and shows you what it finds. You can then delete all the information. It will only delete the information from the copy of the document you're sending; it leaves the original file intact on your PC."  

It's free here: 

http://www.sendshield.com/home/index.php 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Email Question of the Week

Q:  I have my son's old desktop computer that is about 7 years old. It has XP Home, 512 MB RAM and an AMD processor. I ran an AVG virus scan, Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes and found one Trojan with AVG that was placed in the virus vault, one infected file with Malwarebytes, which was place in quarantine and 33 tracking cookies with Ad-Aware, which were removed. 

My problem is that this computer will restart itself all the time. Sometimes, back to back and other times about every 10-20 minutes. It will restart itself while surfing the internet, running Ad-Aware or other programs, and while sitting idle.

Do you have any idea what may be the cause, and if so, the remedy?

A:  It could be overheating.  I would go to someplace like Target or Office Depot and buy a can or two of compressed "air".  Then, disconnect the PC and take it outside.  Remove the side panels (all makes and models are different) and blow out the insides of the machine.  Be careful not to overspin the CPU fan or exhaust fans.  Please let us know if this helps.

Matt Dattilo

thepcgurus at gmail.com

Contact info and legal stuff

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