Does anyone know what these are and why i keep getting them?? :mad:

How do you know you are getting them? Is your firewall chucking up alerts?

Have you put any new software on recently, next time your computer tells you of a scan, click on the info and see if it tells you what program is trying to access your computer (i'm no expert, there seems to be a few IT guys on here, they'll be able to help you more)

it give me a bunch of numbers like ***.***.***.

 

the stars are suppose to be numbers obviously

A port scan is basically someone checking your PC to see what applications are listening for connections from the Internet.

 

The numbers will be an IP address n.n.n.n where n is between 0 and 255, which will uniquely identify a given machine on the Internet. Each IP address can "listen" on 65 thousand different ports, which effectively allows this many simultaneous connections.

 

If you are running a website, your PC will be listening on port 80, if you are running an email server, it will listen on port 25 etc.

 

By scanning your machine, someone can not only assertain (reasonably accurately) which applications you are running, but also locate possible weaknesses and plan further attacks.

 

Generally port scans are harmless provided you have an active firewall, and are rarely targetted at individuals. If you have a permanent internet connection, don't be surprised if you are scanned every few seconds by some teenage sociopath looking for something to break.

 

You can determine who is scanning you by checking the whois details for their IP address (try http://www.dnsstuff.com)

The chinese port scan everyone on the planet. At work i often see the names of chinese ISP's on the netstat list. And your own ISP probably port scans your PC! Blueyonder has a automated bot that has a little nibble of my linux server every so often. If a foreigner is really being nosy i do a SYN packet attack on thier IP which often scares them off. nmap for Linux is the best port scanner.

 

The most inventive hackers try to squirt XML or shell script code into my FTP and Web ports to try and invoke a command on the server.

 

Make sure you have any guest accounts disabled. Use Windows XP firwall and dont use single dictionary words for passwords.

 

But have a pragmatic idea of what would happen if a non commercial computer, a home PC got hacked. They might be able to get some wedding photos, a CV and no doubt some porn but so what. If your paranoid about your PC being hacked i suspect you drive an old Volvo and are a tree hugger :D