100 pings an hour?????

[Huh?]

100 pings an hour ???
Now that my tech has me paying attention to such things, I'm noticing that my Zone Alarm is stopping about 100 pings in an hour. Is this an excessive amount or is this typical? If excessive, what should I do?

Comcast has already told me that their IP addresses are dynamic and change automatically. I've checked for Trojans and TrojanHunter found none.

What's up?

[glc]

Thats pretty typical.

[fudtone]

Do you have Ad-aware and or Spybot installed? I have found that these help control the hits a bit.

You can also tighten up the secruity level on the firewall.

[Huh?]

Thanks folks. Yes, I do have both those programs. I don't seem to run them very often though. I'll have to remember to do that more often.

So these pings are nothing to worry about? Does this slow down your system?

[fudtone]

I was getting about 1/sec for a while untill I thghtened up my security, yes that was slowing down my connection.

[Huh?]

Fudtone,
At this point, the Zone Alarm is set for Local at Medium and Internet at High. Do I need to set the Local for Higher?

[Cricket]

I don't use Zone Alarm anymore, but I think I did have both set to High when I did use it.

Cricket

[Karnevil9]

I think when I used ZA, local at medium was the default setting. They were cionsidered, if I remember, the trusted zones.

[glc]

The defaults in ZA are plenty good - high internet and medium local. I don't see any need to make anything tighter - it looks like it's doing its job well now.

[Statica]

If you are getting a high number of pings then realistically zone alarms will do nothing to protect you. Even if it DENY's the request, it still uses your software & your CPU to do so; which is effectively the same as accepting and responding to a ping. At this stage, zone alarm is nothing more than a notifier that you have been pinged... and considering it as anything more than that would be making a rather judicious assumption. Most software firewalls for windows REJECT packets; which again is like telling people that "there is a door but you are not welcome in .. feel free to bang and scratch at it ..."
What you need is something that will DENY the packets (or DROP) .. I would highly recommend getting yourself a router that can reject WAN-side pings .. or use a linux router on another PC as the gateway.

[Huh?]

Thanks everyone.

Statica,
This is the page I get when I check out any particular ping..... It would appear that Zone Alarm IS taking care of it, no?

ZoneAlarm has blocked an inbound ping from the IP address 68.81.188.45

No breach in your security has occurred. Your computer is safe.
What happened?




ZoneAlarm blocked a ping (ICMP echo request) sent to your computer by a machine at IP address 68.81.188.45. A ping is a ICMP protocol message that is used to check whether a computer, identified by its IP address, is actually connected at a given time.





Should I be concerned?




There is nothing to be concerned about. ZoneAlarm blocked the ping, and your computer sent no reply. The ping itself was simply a check to see if you were signed on to the network or connected to the Internet.





What should I do?




No action needs to be taken because ZoneAlarm blocked the ping and dropped the data packet.

[glc]

ZA *is* denying the packets - if you start pinging a ZA-protected computer, it's a black hole, like nothing is there.

[dtex]

I really think there is something more to this. I've had ZA for over 2 yrs and it's never given me an alert for a ping before a few weeks ago. Now, I'm still getting them by the hundreds per hour, from the same block of addresses-Sprint, in Ruston, Va.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...highlight=ping

The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (ICMP Echo Request ('Ping')) from 65.179.80.143.

Time: 9/27/03 8:12:34 PM

[azscary]

If you set both slider bars to HIGH in Zone Alarm you are placed in Stealth and invisible to a port scanner. Stealth is better than Closed.

[dtex]

za is set med local and hi for internet. It seems to have worked well for the last couple of years, so I'll probaly leave it as is.
If it ain't broke.....

[azscary]

Check this site out and it will give you some idea of the difference between Medium and High. You can decide then.

https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

[dtex]

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice

[azscary]

Cool.

[Blakhart]

With one extremely ignorant individual, I was getting hit 300 to 400 times a min, and this was on dialup. Ignorant in the sense that he/she/it sure was obvious, the more advanced criminals use stealth pings/scans, that are distributed over time and port. Someday ISP's may have to regulate their client's traffic, watching the patterns and usage, and disabling the accounts of abusers automaticly.