Kazaa Lite SLOW download speed

OfflerCrocGod

Ummm firewalls seem to protect you from the evils of the Internet by making sure you can't access it:rolleyes:, not a winning strategy by my books.

daveyjoe

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
Ummm firewalls seem to protect you from the evils of the Internet by making sure you can't access it:rolleyes:, not a winning strategy by my books.

Yeah, the second I mentioned turning off your firewall in this thread, I was attacked by everyone, but I honestly think that it is safe enough to leave your firewall off. Even if worst does come to worst you can always do a system restore and rewind your settings back to the day before (presuming you have xp of course). If your firewall is causing you problems connecting to other computers (aka p2p) then get rid of it providing you know what to do if something goes wrong.

Mutant_Fruit

i;ve never had problems with my firewall blocking anything i didn't want it to block. I usse Kerio 4. Also, for those of you die-hards who think they need no firewall, do a fresh install of windows, and i guarentee you, that before you have time to download a firewall from the internet, you'll have a virus (such as the Blaster virus)

I got caught out on this one. WIthin 4 minutes of starting up windows after clean install i had the blaster induced crashes etc.

OfflerCrocGod

I do fresh installs all the time never hit by anything at all.

kida

just turn on your firewall alerts and watch the amount of people trying to connect to your machine.

Mutant_Fruit

Offler, i can guarentee you 100% that if you load up Windows (one of the versions that the blaster virus DOES affect) and connect to the internet without having patches or firewall installed, you WILL get that virus, definately within 10 minutes.

Also, good firewalls show the attempts to "hack" your computer, and save em in a log. I have seen many attempts by virii, such as blaster and other misc virii in these logs lately.

OfflerCrocGod

I've DONE it 2 weeks ago 1 month ago and again 1 month + 1-2 weeks I went on the net and downloaded SP4 first even using BB I was on the net on all those machines for quiet a while, they all started with SP1 so they were not protected I was fine nothing happened no router in the way either.

Töpher

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
i;ve never had problems with my firewall blocking anything i didn't want it to block. I usse Kerio 4. Also, for those of you die-hards who think they need no firewall, do a fresh install of windows, and i guarentee you, that before you have time to download a firewall from the internet, you'll have a virus (such as the Blaster virus)

I got caught out on this one. WIthin 4 minutes of starting up windows after clean install i had the blaster induced crashes etc.

Yeah, I had that too. problem was my comp decided to stop reading cd-r's after the upgrade to XP pro so I couldnt get my BB drivers! Trying to sort that out on a 56k was a kick in the teeth!

MrPinK

Even if worst does come to worst you can always do a system restore and rewind your settings back to the day before

Not quite the worst that can happen. Blaster has been mentioned already, so lets run with that example....

The DCOM RPC vulnerability that Blaster exploited was there unpatched for almost 3 years. During that time, anyone who discovered it could have written a programme to connect to your pc and do anything they wanted. They could run any piece of code with system privileges, allowing them to steal files, delete user accounts, install backdoors, reformat your computer, etc. Fortunately it was MS that discovered their mistake, and not someone malicious, and the patch was released before the worm came. Also fortunately (because a lot of ppl don't patch their systems), was the fact that Blaster turn out to be pretty harmless. All it did was propagate itself and try (really badly) to DoS an MS server.

Now, if you really believe that this vulnerability was a once off, and that the Windows OS is completely safe now, then you're just kidding yourself. With a firewall, you're protected against the vunerabilities that have yet to be discovered and patched. Can you stay connected to the internet for years without ever being hacked/infected? Of course you can. Leaving your door unlocked doesn't mean you'll definitely be burgled. But many ppl do get hacked/infected all the time and could prevent it by just leaving a free piece of software running in the background.

daveyjoe

Originally posted by MrPinK
Not quite the worst that can happen. Blaster has been mentioned already, so lets run with that example....

The DCOM RPC vulnerability that Blaster exploited was there unpatched for almost 3 years. During that time, anyone who discovered it could have written a programme to connect to your pc and do anything they wanted. They could run any piece of code with system privileges, allowing them to steal files, delete user accounts, install backdoors, reformat your computer, etc. Fortunately it was MS that discovered their mistake, and not someone malicious, and the patch was released before the worm came. Also fortunately (because a lot of ppl don't patch their systems), was the fact that Blaster turn out to be pretty harmless. All it did was propagate itself and try (really badly) to DoS an MS server.

Now, if you really believe that this vulnerability was a once off, and that the Windows OS is completely safe now, then you're just kidding yourself. With a firewall, you're protected against the vunerabilities that have yet to be discovered and patched. Can you stay connected to the internet for years without ever being hacked/infected? Of course you can. Leaving your door unlocked doesn't mean you'll definitely be burgled. But many ppl do get hacked/infected all the time and could prevent it by just leaving a free piece of software running in the background.

If the firewall did just run in the background and not affect your download rate when using P2P clients (for me anyway) then I wouldn't disable it. But it does, so I will choose to turn it off whenever I use P2P. Could something go wrong, of course it could, but so far I've been safe, perhaps that's naive but I honestly think that the firewall thing is blown out of proportion.

Having said that when I leave my computer on overnight (every night), I always enable my firewall, on occasions I have forgotten although even then nothing bad has happened.

MrPinK

If your firewall is slowing your traffic, or interferring with it in anyway other than in a way you want it too, then I wouldn't just disable it when using P2P. I'd get rid of it completely and get a proper one. It doesn't sound like it's working properly.

on occasions I have forgotten although even then nothing bad has happened

Like I said, you can leave it online for years without suffering a thing, but if someone does try to attack your comp you won't be protected.

gurramok

Originally posted by OfflerCrocGod
I do fresh installs all the time never hit by anything at all.

Do you use the internet much ?

A few hours a day/week ? (assuming from home and not work/college where firewalls are used which are not responsible of end user)

Run Adaware/spybot on your PC, guaranteed something will be there.

Install a firewall for a few minutes and look at its log and you will see the amount of probing and attempts on your PC that occurs. Things like your personal info is exposed once on the net without a firewall, this should be one reason to use one.
If you are using P2P software like kazaa without a firewall, you are asking for trouble

I leave pc on 24/7(dsl) , have 2 firewalls (1 hardware/1 software). Firewalls only interfere with your download speeds when you do not let the traffic through your firewall.(Allowing program traffic through unhindered and/or port forwarding)

ie..Its user of the firewall, not the firewall itself which is responsible.

I use and have used alot of P2P in the past and present, a firewall has/does not affect the download speed(bar no proper configuration) one iota

Can you stay connected to the internet for years without ever being hacked/infected? Of course you can

Chance of not getting infected with something(backdoor trojans, spyware..etc) in this scenario is nearly lotto odds

OfflerCrocGod

I installed emm Zone Alarm(?) once just to see what the fuss was in 2-3 weeks of use I may have been probed 5-6 times, so I said screw this it's more hassle then its worth and got rid of it. Maybe Zone Alarm is absolute rubbish at this kinda stuff I dont know?!, but I'm on the net a HUGE AMOUNT OF TIME, I had NTL w/e thing were the w/e was unlimited and free and I went on constantly(re-dial) during the w/e before that my mother used to have heart-attacks from phone bills:D, now its 24/7 ADSL internet for me. I run Adaware and search and destory regulary and get nothing. I never install s/w I get from the net that I haven't checked out before most of the stuff I install nowadays is open source comes form Source Forge etc.... I disable ALL useless services on my PC I have 4 or 5 Services starting up on my computer at boot, I check for patches for everything every 2-3 days AT LEAST. Im paranoied, I never run joke .exes I get from my friends in e-mails I'm always reading sites like slashdot, theinquirer.net, theReg etc...if something is out there I'll know it as soon as possible. Most VXs are spread from users lack of knowledge.

muffen

Just saw this thread... seriously guys... turning off you firewall to run kazaa???
And just because you've never had a virus/worm before, doesn't mean that you cannot get it now.

The XP firewall is completely crap, get a decent firewall. I used to run Norton Internet Security, worked pretty well.

I just recently swapped to a linux firewall, as I have 4 computers on the network I felt it was easier to setup one computer as a firewall, not having to install personal firewalls on each computer individually.
Furthermore, in my current setup, my internet wouldn't work if my firewall went down!

On my current firewall, I have opened up the ports used by eMule and bittorrent (why would anyone use Kazaa anyways, its completly crap).

somano

Just been using Kazaa and whilst downloading my virus scan came out with vbs love letter warning 3 times !

ozmo

Used to use XP firewall - worked really well. You can turn on the log - and a text file is written to windows directory of all the attempted hacks - really scary stuff. About 10 attempted hacks per hour (all script virus's looking for hosts).

Then used a dsl modem/router built in NAT and that was just as good.

Zone Alarm is so daft - difficult to see what its protecting and makes pc slow.


ps. if you like mule - try eDonkey2000 - the full version does the two main networks simutaneously.
DC++ is difficult and very different, but well worth checking out also. Remember to observe copyright rules.

careful now not to get this thread closed.

ozmo

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by ozmo

Remember to observe copyright rules.

Are you implying something!;).

Turner

Ok I think this thread has come to the end of its life.

We all now know

(1) What kazaa is.
(2) We need internet security.
(3) That kazaa can be used to download copyright material.

Thanks all for your input.

Thread closed.

Chief.