Someone threatened to hack me

[Bill81]

Someone threatened to hack me over MSN. I deleted this person, and they don't know my email or my IP address. Am I at risk? What possible ways could they get me?

 

[SagaLore]

You're fine. Your risk is no greater or lesser than before this person told you this over MSN. Its a good idea to have the following levels of protection:

- A Cable/DSL Firewall (Linksys, DLink, Netgear, etc.) which will NAT your egress traffic from your internal network and the Internet. Also blocks unnecessary ingress requests.

- Enable Windows Firewall or install some other kind of software firewall.

- Run Windows Update regularly. Keep your messengers up to date.

- Be careful with P2P, freeware, warez, etc. as you could easily get a trojan onto your machine. When in doubt, run HiJackThis and get someone to review your logs. -

- Disable your default Administrator account, give full admin rights to another account, and use a GOOD password that is at least 8 characters and contains letters, numbers, and at least one special character (~!@#$%^&*()_+-={}|:"<>?[]\;',./)

 

[Harvey]

Report it to MSN with as much info as possible.

Then, reply to warn him that if you have to hack back in self defense, it'll be up close and personal using real steel blades. :shocked:

(sarcasm intended)

 

[ForumMaster]

not really. and even if he knew your IP address, you can easily defend yourself from that. do what SagaLore said. most routers/NAT devices block pings from the WAN side and do quite a lot to protect you by blocking attacks. also, get a good security suite. i suggest ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite. it does cost money and if you want free alternatives, read the secuity thread and implement the various suggestions.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Bill81
Someone threatened to hack me over MSN. I deleted this person, and they don't know my email or my IP address. Am I at risk? What possible ways could they get me?

As others have stated, your overall chances of attack really haven't gone up. Presuming you're on a clean system and have appropriate defenses (anti-malware, firewall) you'll be fine. Lots of 'big talkers' on systems like MSN, real attackers rarely tell you they are going to attack first...