Peter Lewis writes in today's NY Times about a couple of programs that will (1) check your computer ports to see if any are open to Net trollers looking for logged on boxes to host DDoS and such, and (2) block such trolls. 1. The checking service is Steve Gibson's site: www.grc.com 2. The free blocking program, ZoneAlarm, is available at: www.zonelabs.com Both appear to do what is promised. Questions: 3. Do covert intrusive programs such as DIRT get inserted through the ports checked and blocked by 1 and 2, and, 4. If DIRT etc., has already been installed covertly on your machine, would ZoneAlarm detect it as it claims to do for some, unidentifed, programs?
