On 06/11/2024 10:01 a.m., Warren Kumari wrote:
So, who here remembers "BlackICE Defender"?
It was MS Windows software which would watch for and protect against "attacks", draw pretty charts and graphs, and also "report the attack to the attackers ISP".
They did improve slightly over time, but things which it initially viewed as an attack were nefarious things like "you sent me an ICMP echo-request"...
If someone sent a ping to one of my Windows machines it wouldn't even be seen by Windows because each machine is behind it's own separate hardware firewall that would receive and respond to the ping. (I leave WAN ping enabled on the firewalls because I know it's helpful to other internet users to test their connection.) Of course I wouldn't buy junk software like that... I can see where in a corporate environment someone might buy and install it because it checks a box on their "security checklist" or maybe an individual that doesn't understand computers very well buying anything marketed as protecting their computer even though they really have no idea what it's doing. (I do wonder how many people have gotten computer viruses from malware they downloaded that was masquerading as "security software".) I do have to wonder how often some company installed it across their whole corporate network and when one of their machines pinged another one of their machines inside their network (using RFC 1918 address space) BlackIce Defender on the machine receiving the ping would send an abuse report to abuse@iana.org. ^_^ -- Glen A. Pearce gap@ve4.ca Network Manager, Webmaster, Bookkeeper, Fashion Model and Shipping Clerk. Very Eager 4 Tees http://www.ve4.ca ARIN Handle VET-17