Norton security xfinity5/6/2023 ![]() ![]() And many did - until NATs and firewalls became widespread. Anyone could come along and innovate at the edges without having to beg permission from those running the network. The network layer of the Internet was designed to be simple and transparent because this promotes flexibility. You don’t seem to appreciate the danger in all this. ![]() That doesn’t mean it’s right, or that it should be done to an even greater degree.Īs bad as firewalls, NATs and proxies may be, at least they don’t modify the application data. Yes, firewalls and proxies do mangle packets all the time. But like hell will I accept an ISP that forces one on me. ![]() If people want to cripple their network connections with packet filters, that’s their choice. If NATs had been around in the early days of the Internet, you probably never would have heard about it. It was the network’s job to facilitate communication, not to censor or babysit the computers attached to it. The Internet originally became a success because any two computers that wanted to talk to each other with a protocol and application of their own choosing could do so. An unfortunate side effect is that, without special arrangements, computers behind NATs are unable to accept inbound network traffic even if they want to. A NAT is a gross hack that shares a single public IPv4 address (of which there is a limited supply) among a set of computers with private IP addresses. It is completely unacceptable to not give the end user the option to connect his computer directly to the Internet if he wants.Ī NAT is not a firewall. This entry was posted on Monday 4th of October 2010 02:06 PM “When we see instructions are being sent from that known evil to one of our customer addresses, we know the instructions from that address cannot be good and that there’s something not good happening on your network,” Douglas said.Ĭomcast has started rolling the system out on a market-by-market basis, and expects to have it deployed to most of its 16 million customers by the first quarter of 2011, Douglas said. If Damballa spots a Comcast Internet address that is phoning home to one of these botnet command centers, Comcast’s system flags that customer’s address for a service notice. Comcast users who have trouble with that are steered toward the option of paying for help from Norton Live.Ĭomcast spokesman Charlie Douglas declined to offer statistics on the number of customers who responded to alerts generated during the company’s pilot version of Constant Guard, but said the response has been “very positive.” He said customers who chose to ignore or close the service notice without taking action will be re-notified every few days until the problem is resolved.ĭouglas said the bot intelligence is coming from Damballa, an Atlanta-based security company that monitors botnet activity and identifies botnet control networks. That’s because while wireless routers plug directly into high-speed Internet modems - and allow multiple computers to use the same Internet address and connection - Comcast’s Constant Guard cannot isolate the infection beyond the Internet address assigned to the customer’s modem. The e-mail Comcast sends to bot-infected customers.įor customers who receive a notice but are running a wireless router behind their cable modem, however, figuring out which computer is infected may not be so easy. Downloading and installing Secunia‘s free Personal Software Inspector tool, a program that periodically scans the user’s computer for missing security updates for commonly used third party applications, such as Adobe Reader, Flash, and Java, and QuickTime.Ĭomcast also is offering free subscriptions to Norton Security Suite for up to 7 computers per customer - including Mac versions of the Symantec suite.Downloading and running Microsoft’s malicious software removal tool.Making sure the customer has some kind of up-to-date anti-virus software running.Downloading any missing Microsoft security updates.The system also sends the customer’s browser a so-called “service notice,” a semi-transparent banner that overlays a portion of whatever page is being displayed in the user’s Web browser.Ĭustomers can then either move or close the alert, or click Go to Anti-Virus Center, for recommended next-steps, which for Windows customers includes: The Philadelphia-based cable Internet company is expanding nationwide a pilot program that began in Denver last year, which automatically informs affected customers with an e-mail urging them to visit the company’s security page. Comcast, the nation’s largest residential Internet service provider, announced last week that it is expanding an initiative to contact customers whose PCs appear to be infected with a malicious bot program. ![]()
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