I was first hit by a virus over the Internet in 1995.  New to PCs and the Internet, I was foolish enough to be surfing the Net with my new PC without any firewall or anti-virus protection. The nasty virus was so pernicious that it was a major mess necessitating hardware vendor tech assistance to clean up and re-secure my PC.

 

That was a lesson. Since then, on all my PCs, I've had firewalls, anti-virus and anti-spyware apps, all kept current and set to the top, paranoid level of alert and scanning.

 

My point here:  Today, I made one change in my longstanding firewall options settings.  I changed it up to pop up a real-time warning of attempted port-scanning, instead of just logging them. Just curious.

 

In the past four hours of surfing, I've had over 20 warnings of port scanning attempts. Among other information, the firewall gives the IP# of the source and the port number that the scan was aimed at.  Firing up an excellent freeware tool called Sam Spade, I did a whois and traceroute search on all these DNS numbers.

 

 

I've no idea if these are from Chinese for-profit cyber-gangs looking for takeover-able PCs with broad band connections, for use as zombies or the same from geeks of the Chinese Intel. Service.  I suspect some of each.

 

If I, a private citizen with no professional Computer Science expertise, can successfully protect my unremarkable PC with a combo of some very inexpensive and some freeware software, WHY THE HELL CAN'T THE IDIOTS RUNNING OUR CONGRESS ENSURE THAT THESE CONGRESSIONAL NETWORKS ARE SAFE???

 

(I noted that last week, just when it'd be lost in the pre-Christmas news distractions, Congress gave itself a nice fat pay raise. For a fraction of the total cost of that exercise in unearned recompense, competent network and PC techs could certainly secure the Congressional PCs and networks from our Chinese "friends".)

I really laughed at the previous comments regarding the 'Net c.1995.  It was a brave new world back then, and the China comment rings true -- realize that *the only* orgs. that could have been on the net would have had to be gov't/school related.

 

I really wish I could go into more detail, one thing is for sure, there are a lot more IP's in China than there used to be.  That's a good thing.  Believe it or not, a lot of the 'evil' hackers from the 80's and 90's grew up to be responsible citizens, parents and people you want on your side... :)

 

As far as Congress?  High-tech to them is a Blackberry.  They define the term Technical Luddite.  Indeed, Fred Flintstone would be better on a 'puter or anything net-related.  What's scary is that these guys have the power to pass laws they can't comprehend, let alone understand the technical underpinnings, especially when it comes to encryption, anonymous routing and freedom of speech issues.  By voting them in, I guess we got to choose our own masters. 

 

A world community overseen by a small town mayor, yet I have faith in a new generation, kids that grew up on Nintendo, violent cartoons and MTV...this is the kind of thinking we'll need, taking on a bully like Donkey Kong one minute, building a bridge the next.

 

It's going to be an exciting ride.  Keep your Faraday cages handy and secure.  :)

 

-osgo

 

 

 

In my country parliament members would probably be delighted if someone paid so much attention to them and hacked their computers. In reality no one considers it worth an effort. They would find a pile of nonsense only.

 

DG