Risks of unblocking Chinese website on my firewall

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hank
  • Start date Start date
H

Hank

Hi you will find I am semi-computer illiterate but bear with me, so here
goes.

I donwloaded PPLive from a Chinese web site as it enables me to watch sports
TV live on the internet (sometimes Windows Media Player kicks in, sometimes
Realplayer 10).

Subtitles are in Chinese - no local adult education classes on that where I
live - but sometimes the commentary e.g. for european soccer matches is in
English.

Don't know what 'streaming' technology they use, it does buffer initially
but then seems like a live, permanent feed of data, I googled it and some
say that rules out 'Bittorrent' as that only downloads chunks of data.

I have two questions

I had to unblock PPLive on my windows firewall (which I know is crap anyway,
especially with regard to monitoring outgoing traffic) so now I am wondering
does this leave my PC open to HDD being scanned by Chinese IT students, my
emails being read etc?

Also it states somewhere that they use every PC who uses them to also
rebroadcast the data it receives, no idea how this is meant to work. This
may be a bit OT for an anivirus NG but could this implicate me in illegal
activities? What if I watch something that is pay-per-view on my local
cable channels and/or Skye.

H
 
Probably should have said, I do run an up-to-date version of McAfee
antivirus, but virus infection is not my main worry here.
 
"
I had to unblock PPLive on my windows firewall (which I know is crap
anyway, especially with regard to monitoring outgoing traffic) so now
I am wondering does this leave my PC open to HDD being scanned by
Chinese IT students, my emails being read etc?
Click to expand...

The rest of it I don't know about, but I kind of doubt it. However you
can watch outbound connection with something like Active Ports (free) and
you can also put a short-cut for AP in the Start folder too and watch
inbound and outbound connections at boot and after the boot by launching
AP at anytime.

You can also supplement the XP FW with IPsec that can stop inbound or
outbound traffic, by port, protocol or IP to/from the machine.

http://www.petri.co.il/block_ping_traffic_with_ipsec.htm

You can implement the AnalogX Secpol file and look at the rules that have
been created and learn and go from there and implement your on rules.

http://www.analogx.com/contents/articles/ipsec.htm

Ipsec is very powerful and will supplement the XP FW.

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=813878

You should try to secure the XP O/S for a machine that has a direct
connection to the Internet.

http://labmice.techtarget.com/articles/winxpsecuritychecklist.htm

You should secure services and shutdown services that are not needed like
the File and Print Sharing service as you should not be sharing resources
and others such services.

http://www.ntsvcfg.de/ntsvcfg_eng.html

Duane :)
 
Hank said:
Probably should have said, I do run an up-to-date version of McAfee
antivirus, but virus infection is not my main worry here.
Click to expand...


You can look for yourself from time to time with the tools in the link as
things can be circumvented and defeated such as AV's, malware detection
applications and personal FW(s).

Long version

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Hidden_Backdoors_Trojan_Horses_and_R
ootkit_Tools_in_a_Windows_Environment.html

Short version

http://tinyurl.com/klw1

Duane :)
 
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