Because ... if a "trojan infected" laptop uses your wifi (or a war
driver passes your way, or one of your machines picks up one form or
another of an exploit via email, evil website etc), the compromise will
in turn try to compromise all other machines on your network. If you
are using filesharing... those secondary compromises will be a cakewalk
and without individual computer firewalls... not very difficult.
You can't have your cake and eat it too in this game.
Software firewalls and antivirus eat up process cycles, filesharing is
an invitation to "share" your computer and firewalls also stop generic
filesharing.
Some of the best software engineers in the world are designing the
trojans and malware these days and they have unlimited budgets because
the profits on the "dark side" are so HUGE.
Conservative estimates are that 25% of all US PC's are compromised and
used as platforms for various dark arts.
Once a machine is compromised by these sophisticated exploits, it
usually takes a format and rebuild to remove them.
All professionals will tell you a "layered",/ overlapping /
multifaceted, external firewall, internal firewall, antivirus, malware
defense" is the ONLY way to go.
On the university network I used to work for, an unprotected machine
would be compromised in 30 seconds and there was nothing the U. could do
about it.
I occasionally see war drivers cruising the residential streets I live
on. One of them that I stopped and talked to was using a laptop with
powerful robotic scanning attack software (freeware) to compromise wifi
networks. He was an unemployed computer project manager and got paid
"by the piece." He was making good money. White collar crime is out of
control these days
One of the automated/ robotic exploits getting more rampant is credit
card and ID theft.
I myself wouldn't take on the poor odds / huge risk you are contemplating.
What's easy now, won't be easy later.
My two bits,
db
RLeeSimon wrote:
Question is do I even need that? I suspect the desktop being behind the
router but wired is protected and the wifi to my laptop is behind the router
and also protected ...waddoIneed a software firewall for, then? I am not
trying to be facetious...
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony B [mailto:ton...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 4:34 PM
Subject: Re: firewall ...hard or what?
The built-in Windows firewall suffices for 95% of users. Just turn _it_ on.
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 3:38 PM, RLeeSimon <rleesi...@gmail.com> wrote:
I have a new Linksys Router with, of course, their built in firewall.
BEHIND it is my desktop computer. Also, I use my laptop to it
wirelessly. WPA encryption is enabled. Do I need a software firewall
at all ? I have PCToolsPro on my desktop computer which causes some
misery. I have ZoneAlarm on my laptop which causes some more misery.
My internet connection sharing worked ok but my network would not do
fileshare or much else with all that going. With it shut off, bingo,
everything works! Am I ok this way or what? If not, why? TIA!!
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