Computer Help - One of my friends called me today. She was worried her computer is getting broken into.
She told me she started getting warning notifications
of her Norton Security Suite saying “A remote system is attempting to access CHROME on your computer”.
CHROME was the internet browser she was using (a program similar to Internet Explorer or Firefox).
Norton Firewall was asking if this remote computer should be allowed to access her internet browser…
She said that Norton defined this as a “Low” Security Risk and she asked if she should have confirmed to
approve this access or deny it.
I must say that I found many people who had this question and each time it was a different
program on their computer that the “remote system” was trying to access.
Sometimes it was MSN Messenger and sometimes “SVCHOST” and others.
Do you remember the “3 Little Pigs”? You probably heard it more than once when you were a kid…
One of the lesson was - you should not open the door for strangers no matter what they tell you.
Mommy should have the keys and does not need you to open the door for her.
If in doubt, close it out…
Same goes to Norton Anti Virus, Avira Anti Virus or any other similar Security solution - tell them to deny access.
What the error message “A remote system is attempting to access” or similar to it means is that your Firewall
detected a computer on the internet which is trying to “talk” to one of the programs on your computer - without
having the permission to start a conversation.
If the program in YOUR computer was to start a communication with a remote computer, such as a web site
or a service, your firewall would detect any response from that remote service as is and allow it.
But if your Firewall detects a trial to start communication that you did not ask for it will warn you.
In some cases where for example you have a “peer to peer” program such as those used for file sharing
(bearshare, bittorent and others) there might be a situation where other computers try to
start talking to your file sharing program.
A good program would tell your Firewall to allow such communication when you installed it, and therefore
you should have to warnings later on…
So bottom line, it looks like you should tell your firewall to deny such trials to access your computer.
Another question is what should you do if this alert pops up a lot…
I’d say, you can tell your firewall to automatically deny access in such cases without asking for your
intervention.
You can lower down the amount of such cases by setting your router to deny any access into
your network unless you started the communication.
That’s it for now…do let me know if you had such issues as well and if this article helps you!
P.S. I started reading PC Magazine Digital edition…saves trees and costs less!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
