I was pleasantly surprised to see the first signs of life from my Network Shield since it was introduced. After all, by its nature it’s rather inconspicuous – no “items scanned” or “last scanned”, for instance.
Last night I was playing solitaire offline and had apparently forgotten to disconnect (I’m on dialup). I do that once in a while, which is why my ISP and I agreed we’d set up at both ends to disconnect after 30 minutes of inactivity. Anyway, I was rather startled to have a popup from avast in mid-game advising that Network Shield had successfully blocked a DCOM exploit attack.
So it’s nice to see the darned thing actually works, even if it’s deadly quiet 99.9 percent of the time. Way to go, Alwil.
Hi my name is gordon and computors and forum are new to me, i use avast and recently my network shield flashed up saying that DCOM exploit was blocked, i ran a programe from steve and it said my pc was safe, my question is do i have anything to wory about as it keeps popping up but with different numbers
thanks.
Messages like:
Network Shield: blocked “DCOM Exploit” - attack from 81.178.115.162:135/tcp
are due to the RPC/DCOM exploit, which is a vulnerability that allows an attacker to gain access to the destination machine by sending a malformed packet to the DCOM service. Well… sounds too technical…
Network Shield is a protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyzes all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be also taken as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System).
Which is your operational system?
Which firewall are you using?
@ MikeBCda & gordon 02
If the Network Shield is popping-up I would say you have to check why your firewall (which is ?) isn’t protecting you fully, that in theory should intercept this before Network Shield.
@ gordon 02
So long as it keeps popping -up you can rest assured that it has blocked the attempt. However, what you have to consider is the network shield isn’t a full firewall so you must ensure the areas that the network shield doesn’t monitor are taken care of by your firewall.
I’ve been using ZA (home) all along – that incident was probably several major versions back, and I wouldn’t have a clue if ZA has seen any relevant changes since then. No alerts since then, more importantly.
By all accounts it does give limited outbound protection but not as good as many 3rd party firewalls otherwise I think there would be lots of screaming anti-trust/monopoly/law suite.
The interesting point is I believe that the outbound protection element of it is disabled by default. I could be wrong about this as it is a long time since I read this in a review in a newsletter.
DavidR, thanks for the welcome, i only found you guys after a google search about the DCOM exploit.
because of my experience within HM Coastguard i was made global maderator on a forum in my area of Sunderland so i am going to give you guys a mention. http://www.northeastvoice.co.uk/
thanks once again.
Now you have found us, don’t be a stranger. Stick around and browse the forums, especially the sticky topics at the top of each of the forums, not to mention the avast help file. They provide a wealth of information to help you get the best from avast.
hi guys
ever since i installed the zone alarm my network shield has not flashed up any warnings.
thanks again guys.
all i need to do now is find a way to speed up my computor, maybe it due an upgrade.
I don’t think the seafaring origins are lost on Alwil software, the vps update download is jollyrodger.vps.stamp ;D
avast
interj. Nautical
Used as a command to stop or desist.
[From Middle Dutch hou vast, hold fast : hou, houd, imperative of houden, to hold + vast, fast; see past- in Indo-European roots.]
You might want to change your avatar for another, resize or use this one. We try to keep avatars around 100 X 100 for those who don’t have high resolution monitors.
No big (excuse the pun) problem, yours wasn’t that big compared by some, it is just a reminder if you do happen to switch avatars you need to consider the size.
