Scanning Activity

A check of my firewall history shows:



49 probes of my machine in the last 90 minutes. That's not supersuper high, but that's not the usual level of scanning activity. I wonder if that spike at around 6:30 could be due to people getting online now that they're home from work?

Looking at the log, it appears there are still many home users on my ISP's network whose systems are not patched yet, so their machines are still part of the problem. Basically, the infecting program scans a network for vulnerable machines, installs itself on those that are wide open, rinse, repeat, and the infection spreads. It's a nefarious little bugger, this Blaster worm.

ntodd

[Update, 7:37PM: scans have doubled in the past hour.]

[Update, 8:09PM: my wife and I both had trouble connecting to our ISP just now (via painfully slow dialup). I'm speculating that the congestion is bad enough that messages from the remote access server to/from the authentication server are getting bogged down, so our dial-up software is timing out. I've asked my provider to confirm, but I doubt they will tell me due to security concerns (generally not a good idea to share info about your network architecture ). But you never know. And in the "no duh" files, Reuters is reporting that the Web Worm Attacks Windows, Spreads Fast. Really? I wonder if the VT DMV is back up yet. I only have 7 more days to renew my license...]


[Update, 8/13: Apparently the authentication problems were due to a "separate issue".]  ¶ 6:36 PM