Because of the Code Red Worm, all computers on the Internet are regularly getting probed. My home firewall shows around 100 probes in the last 24 hours. Most of these probes are the Code Red Worm looking for a Win2k or NT machines running the Microsoft IIS web server. Since I am running Win98 and do not run a web server, these probes are completely harmless, even without a firewall. A few of the probes are looking for some remote control Trojan virus like Sub7 or BackOrifice. I don't have these Trojans on my machine, so these probes are completely harmless.


These probes of your computer could be described as "attempts to hack into your computer". Unless you have gotten your computer infected with one of the Trojan viruses or are running the Microsoft IIS web server on NT or Win2k and have not installed the security patch, you don't have much to worry about.


As Lenny indicated above good updated anti-virus software is your best security precaution.