Always - on internet security

solo

solo

Computer Hobbyist
I'm running MacOS X, almost exclusively now. I have a cable internet connection and was wondering; what is the safest state to leave my Mac in when I'm not using it (overnight, while at work...)?

I've noticed that the machine doesn't really go to sleep when I logoff, but I wonder if it's just as safe to stay logged on and put it to sleep. All this as an alternative to powering down the machine all together.

I ask because, while surfing the internet under Linux on a PC (on a dial-up connection), I got hacked; so I'm quite paranoid about an always - on connection. I'd like to know when the machine is least vunerable from an attack, while still powered up. Any thoughts, or suggestions? TIA :).
 
I've had 6 attempts of people trying to hack into my system via FTP. The attempts came from California (twice), Belgium (twice), and France (twice) and were unsuccessful. I know that the next release of Mac OS X (Jaguar, 10.2) is supposed to allow users to configure the built-in firewall through a Preference Pane. From what I've read, Apple made OS X fairly bullet proof to hackers right out of the box, but it is a UNIX variant and is potenitially hackable. Consider this: We haven't heard of Apple having security holes that the other 95% of the population experiences. To my knowledge, the firewall in my computer is not turned on.

If you want to see if anyone has attempted to hack in, just go to the Finder under the "Go" menu click "Go To Folder" or press Command-~ and type /var/log/. Then look for system.log. The information will be somewhere in that text file.
 
I tried to open the system.log and i found a bunch of info. What am I looking for...could you be a little more specific? I have lines that look like this:

Jun 15 23:06:48 localhost mach_kernel: ipfw: 1200 Deny P:2 172.16.9.1 224.0.0.1 in via en0

...is this someone trying to hack me?
 
Basically this just means that the connection was denied.

If you set your system to sleep (and to *not* wakeup for network access), your computer is safe. You can turn on FTP access to try it, let your computer sleep and then try to connect to its IP address via FTP. First, of course, try to connect to it when it's *not* sleeping.
 
Originally posted by fryke
Basically this just means that the connection was denied.

If you set your system to sleep (and to *not* wakeup for network access), your computer is safe. You can turn on FTP access to try it, let your computer sleep and then try to connect to its IP address via FTP. First, of course, try to connect to it when it's *not* sleeping.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks! This was the info I was looking for. :)
 
Please excuse this newbie question, but, where exactly would you look to see if someone tried to hack your system and what would you look for?

Thanks.:)
SA
 
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