Police set to step up hacking of home PCs

[IronBits]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5439604.ece

If you live in Britain, it's time to fire up a Smoothwall router, or something similar, so they can't hack into your home network.

Which you should have had installed before you connected your PC to the internet in the first place!

[LAURENU2]

Can I ask what a Smoothwall router is?

[IronBits]

A PS running linux software, it's never been hacked.
http://www.smoothwall.org/

[IronBits]

The Home Office has denied it has made any change to rules governing how police can remotely snoop on people's computers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01..._remote_snoop/

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

Of course it's going to "deny" everything... I mean look at the FARCE that happened last month with a Conservative MP's PC being removed from the House of Commons by Police without the proper warrent and being waved in by the Sarjent at Arms who was "new to the job" and "Mr Speaker" as well..

Not to mention the lost laptops, desktops, cd's, memory sticks and paperwork...

but my local MP is the PM and I voted for him, don't look at me that way, it's those beloved High rollers that stuffed us up like a /end

[Shish]

I've used Smoothwall for a few years now, running on an old Celery and 4Gb HD with several Intel dual net cards in and can recommend it to anyone with almost any kind of old economical rig. Does take a little setting up to work at it's best but not difficult or different by much to any firewall. I've always run a firewall and never been compromised but did have some problems with a bought version of Zone Alarm Pro. I have been attacked a couple times while running servers for various reasons but never had much problem and reccomend a firewall even behind a router as most people never even bother setting basic stuff up, especially wifi security. Ther's at least 6 around me now with open networks and another that I know and demonstrated to him what can happen. He was very surprised that I could snoop his pc so easily and security was actually so easy to setup now with WPS and WPA2 etc. As usual, he'd never read the book or listened to the sales person, engineer etc. Apparently, the engineers are no longer allowed to touch clients pc s so the security setup rarely gets done. I can even pick up a young lady who shares everything openly on the outside network and uses non secured wifi internally between 4 family laptops, 2 of which do internet banking etc. I have warned them but everything is still wide open so that's all you can do. I think all parents in households with children should be forced to take a course and exam before letting lids ( 3 and up that I know of) have internet access but just like all parenting nowadays, most of the duties are sadly neglected by parents who both frequently have to work themselves to death to pay for their mortgage and lifestyle that current society and capitalism seems to force everybody into. And no, I don't think Communism works too well either.
OK, sorry for the rant but I do get fed up with some people, after telling them they will have problems, complaining to all and sundry when the sh*t hits the fan and frequently asking me to sort out their unsecured, accessed by kids unsupervised, or protected in any way, computers.
Now I'm gonna shut up, go away and leave youall in peace for a while and go chill with a super cooled 3 litres of a gorgeous peach based white wine ( kind of orangey color actually) which has carefully matured for near to 5 years and 20%+ proof after a bit of water removal freezing and filtering. And nobody is sharing it so go get yer own tipple outa the forum bar if the barman is around (or even if he aint).

[Petey]

I always use ShieldsUP! to make sure I haven't broken anything when I have been fiddling with my firewall settings. You can find it at https://www.grc.com/default.htm (in the Hot Spots section halfway down the page).

CCTV cameras everywhere, compulsory ID cards on the way and the possibility of the government hacking your PC - anybody from China should feel right at home. Welcome to the UK

[em99010pepe]

CR9 destroying Ferrari's on UK and now this? Where is UK going?