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Understanding Internet risks
Risks from active content
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Other Trojan horse programs might record all your keystrokes to capture
passwords and other sensitive data. Norton Personal Firewall blocks the
ports that Remote Access Trojan horse programs use to communicate over
the Internet.
Covering tracks
When a hacker has gained as much control of a computer as possible, the
task turns to concealing the evidence. If you don’t know that a hacker has
compromised your computer, you won’t take steps to stop such actions.
On computers running Windows 2000/XP, hackers try to turn off auditing
and modify or clear the event logs. On any computer, hackers may hide files
so that they are available for future visits. In extreme cases, hackers might
format the hard drive of a compromised computer to avoid identification.
Risks from active content
ActiveX controls and Java applets are called active content because they can
do more than display text or graphics. Most active content is safe. Common
uses of active content are popup menus and up-to-date stock quotes.
Both ActiveX and Java are supposed to be safe to run in your browser.
ActiveX uses a system of digital certificates that lets you decide if you want
an ActiveX control to run. Digital certificates appear as dialog boxes that
ask if you want to install and run a control that appears when you are
browsing the Web.
There are several problems with using digital certificates. Some controls do
not have certificates, and some certificates provide very little information
about what the control does.
The Java sandbox was designed to prevent Java applets from accessing
information outside of the browser and doing anything that might harm
your computer. However, hackers continually find ways to get around Java
safeguards and use Java features in ways not conceived of by its
developers.
Norton Personal Firewall monitors active content and can block all active
content or warn you whenever active content is encountered. Norton
AntiVirus Auto-Protect detects malicious ActiveX controls and Java applets
and prevents them from running.
Norton Personal Firewall monitors active content and can block all active
content or warn you whenever active content is encountered.