Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

[Ole Juul]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

No matter if I know that no ping will get any info from my PC while running Kubuntu LL at least and having ufw in active status, I still get the same results from before I learned how vulnerable my ports were. What should I do now?

(Remember I'm still some kind of newbie...)

It is not easy to say yet because you still haven't told us your exact setup. I asked earlier and so did zlow in this post. We really do need to know if you have a router in your setup which (most likely) has a built in firewall, or if you are running a firewall on each of your machines instead, or if you have none of the above. Without this knowledge it is impossible to be specific.

[kyonides]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

Oh, I thought I already said I only have a cable modem and the hub but no router.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

Oh, I thought I already said I only have a cable modem and the hub but no router.

You did, but I don't know what your cable modem looks like and the use of a hub is unusual since they are generally (except for special situations) considered obsolete. That's why we were asking additional questions. I will assume then that your cable modem does not have a router or firewall built into it.

It is highly recommended that you use a firewall. That means you should install one on each of the computers which are plugged into your hub. I haven't personally done this because I use a firewall on my gateway (router) but I think there were some iptables related ideas earlier. I just checked the repositories and it seems there are many choices which are just a click away. Since defaults can be very effective on a firewall, I'm sure some of them are extremely easy to set up. As for advice on which is the best choice, I will wait for someone else here to pipe up.

[kubicle]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

That means you should install one on each of the computers which are plugged into your hub. I haven't personally done this because I use a firewall on my gateway (router) but I think there were some iptables related ideas earlier. I just checked the repositories and it seems there are many choices which are just a click away. Since defaults can be very effective on a firewall, I'm sure some of them are extremely easy to set up. As for advice on which is the best choice, I will wait for someone else here to pipe up.

There is already a kernel built-in firewall installed on kubuntu, just not enabled by default. The "firewalls" installable from the repos are just configuration tools for it.

The configuration tool installed by default is "ufw", so enabling a firewall is as simple as running:

sudo ufw enable

No matter if I know that no ping will get any info from my PC while running Kubuntu LL at least and having ufw in active status, I still get the same results...

That sounds rather odd, can you post the output of "sudo ufw status verbose"?

...before I learned how vulnerable my ports were

I'll repeat myself, closed ports are not vulnerable.

[kyonides]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

I see, but they're not stealth...

My ufw status verbose output:

Status: active
Logging: on (low)
Default: deny (incoming), allow (outgoing)
New profiles: skip

[kubicle]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

I see, but they're not stealth...

My ufw status verbose output:

Status: active
Logging: on (low)
Default: deny (incoming), allow (outgoing)
New profiles: skip

That looks ok: firewall enabled, and incoming traffic denied by default.

I see you have a hub (Really? a hub? :P), do you have any other machines connected to the hub?

[kyonides]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

A PC and a laptop only but they're shutdown almost all the time.

And yes, it's a humble hub with 8 ports.

[kubicle]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

Can you (for testing purposes) remove the extra variables from the equation and connect your system straight into your modem and run the test again.

[zlow]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

A PC and a laptop only but they're shutdown almost all the time.

And yes, it's a humble hub with 8 ports.

Do they have Wake on LAN enabled? One little magic packet will turn them on if they do, and they are connected to a HUB (if one can figure out how to get the magic packet into your broadcast domain).

Just a thought from a different perspective since you mentioned that you found the computer on.

[kyonides]

Re: Is it possible for some hacker to get access to my modem and HUB?

I did it just a few moments ago, zlow, but it showed my the same amount of blue and green squares, I could only find a few green ones just like when it was connected to the hub... So I have the same problem no matter if I'm using Kubuntu LL or sidux-kde if it's a real problem.

I've no idea about what's wake...