Aces High - Total Lockup on loading Online - Aurelius, anyone, help pls :)

[Chairboy]

Skuzzy,

I'm in management for the development organization at Symantec (the makers of Norton software).  If you know of a problem with Norton Antivirus and Aces High, please let me know the specifics and I'll have it looked at.  

That said, I've used NAV on my Aces High machine the entire duration I've had an account here, and I have never had any of the problems you describe.

Please email me immediately at bhallert@symantec.com and we'll figure out what's going on.

Regards,

Chairboy

[Chairboy]

One other thing regarding your advice about personal firewall.  

A common mistake is to assume that the only danger comes from malicious users connecting to a listening service, but that's not true at all.

This is a copy/paste of what I wrote to someone else on another board here who is operating under similar misconceptions:

Ever heard of nukers? Those are programs that take advantage of flaws in TCP/IP implementations to crash a target machine. For example, you could target a Win98 machine's IP address in winnuke and cause it to IPF.

There are other similar exploits that affect other versions of windows, like ping flooding and things that take advantage of insecurities in Windows File Sharing.

Not using a firewall is an amateurish mistake, especially on todays internet. If you use a good firewall like Norton or ZoneAlarm, you can be protected against this stuff. If you take the thirty seconds that's needed to properly set up your game, you shouldnt' have problems.

[Skuzzy]

I appreciate the offer and will get that email to you tomorrow.

The category of attacks you are describing pretty much fall into the DOS area.

For DOS attacks, there is not much you can do to begin with, as the goal may not be to corrupt the machine but simply corrupt the connection itself.

The vulnerabilities of flawed TCP implementations does exist, but those programs that attack said weaknesses cannot do much more than crash the computer.  A nuisance and an annoyance at best.

The best method of protection is external of the actual computer being protected.  Not everyone can do that and that is understood.  Most ISP's leave thier networks rediculously open for attacks.
Even some of the 10.x.x.x users are vulernable as the ISP has not taken the time to stop propagating the translation table or just leaving it exposed to hackers.

My network at home is completely devoid of firewalls and anti-virus programs.  In all my years I have never had an attack of any type nor has any hacker been successful at getting to my network.  I do my protection external of my home computers, which allows my computers to run at thier fullest potential.

I am not advocating people should not run firewalls nor anti-virus programs, but with a modicum of effort you can run them when you need to run them and not keep them up all the time.