I think I was hacked

[Guest]

I was surfing IE with security on my computer running, 3 firewalls. Then the firewalls said they suffered a error, except for the firewall built in Win XP. The other 2 suffered the error, I had to freeze my connections, in fear of some hacker having access to everything and rebooted the computer to bring the firewalls back. After that, the firewalls logs were completely empty. I'm scanning for any Trojans or Spyware now, I had about 20 data miners detected, but that's nothing new.

Main things I'm afraid if this was a hacker, that if he\she managed to get past the firewalls and disable them, that may have corrupted any virus scanners as well. But he\she was only in my computer without being seen for 10-20 mins. The errors sadly didn't pop-up and notify me immediately, have no idea how long I would have been exposed.

I'm also hoping that he\she won't come back, if it was a hacker, they may know where all the holes in my security are. But I'm not sure of all this, why I'm asking the experts here.

 

[John Barnett - MVP]

Why 3 firewalls? As an example Zone Alarm recommend that you disable XP's
firewall otherwise there could be a conflict. Maybe the 3 firewalls have
finally conflicted between themselves causeing the error. Even so, two
firewalls were down and the XP firewall was still functioning, so you had
some protection.
If you are worried that your anti virus application may have been effected
go to the Norton website www.symantec.com and do a web based anti virus
scan.
Finally decide upon just one firewall and use that one instead of all three.
To tyr them out you can always disable them one at a time and then go to
www.grc.com and run the shieldsup application to check that the firewall is
operating at full stealth.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

I'm almost betting that your problems are more related to software conflicts
in multiple firewalls. Hackers generally do not waste time on protected
systems, there are too many out there to monkey with that are not protected.

Start/run eventvwr.msc, see if there are any clues in the system and
application logs.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

I was surfing IE with security on my computer running, 3 firewalls. Then

the firewalls said they suffered a error, except for the firewall built in
Win XP. The other 2 suffered the error, I had to freeze my connections, in
fear of some hacker having access to everything and rebooted the computer to
bring the firewalls back. After that, the firewalls logs were completely
empty. I'm scanning for any Trojans or Spyware now, I had about 20 data
miners detected, but that's nothing new.

Main things I'm afraid if this was a hacker, that if he\she managed to get

past the firewalls and disable them, that may have corrupted any virus
scanners as well. But he\she was only in my computer without being seen for
10-20 mins. The errors sadly didn't pop-up and notify me immediately, have
no idea how long I would have been exposed.

I'm also hoping that he\she won't come back, if it was a hacker, they may

know where all the holes in my security are. But I'm not sure of all this,
why I'm asking the experts here.

 

[Richard Urban]

Please explain why you have 3 firewalls running/conflicting at the same
time?

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

I was surfing IE with security on my computer running, 3 firewalls. Then

the firewalls said they suffered a error, except for the firewall built in
Win XP. The other 2 suffered the error, I had to freeze my connections, in
fear of some hacker having access to everything and rebooted the computer to
bring the firewalls back. After that, the firewalls logs were completely
empty. I'm scanning for any Trojans or Spyware now, I had about 20 data
miners detected, but that's nothing new.

Main things I'm afraid if this was a hacker, that if he\she managed to get

past the firewalls and disable them, that may have corrupted any virus
scanners as well. But he\she was only in my computer without being seen for
10-20 mins. The errors sadly didn't pop-up and notify me immediately, have
no idea how long I would have been exposed.

I'm also hoping that he\she won't come back, if it was a hacker, they may

know where all the holes in my security are. But I'm not sure of all this,
why I'm asking the experts here.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I was surfing IE with security on my computer running, 3 firewalls. Then the firewalls
said they suffered a error, except for the firewall built in Win XP. The other 2 suffered
the error, I had to freeze my connections, in fear of some hacker having access
to everything and rebooted the computer to bring the firewalls back. After that, the
firewalls logs were completely empty. I'm scanning for any Trojans or Spyware
now, I had about 20 data miners detected, but that's nothing

new.


Almost certainly your problem was causedby running three
firewalls, and conflicts among them. Multiple firewalls do
nothing to improve your security and just expose you to risk of
such conflicts. Pick whichever firewall you like best and get rid
of the other two.

 

[-xiray-]

I'm scanning for any Trojans or Spyware now, I had about 20 data miners detected, but that's nothing new.

And after you pick one firewall to use... stop downloading crap
freeware (and stop visiting those sites that put that stuff on your
system).