Over the weekend I installed a virus checker for the first time. I was pleased to be contacted with some helpful advice by friendly E2-ers. Thanks guys. This place really is quite different from anywhere else I've ever seen.

Virus checking software is useful, but I was advised to install a personal firewall too. Zonealarm is great. As soon as it was installed and I dialed up I immedietly saw loads of stuff being blocked and logged. ('ICMP ECHO requests' (Ping), FTP requests. HTTP requests (lots of these) and, weirdly, outbound requests to 6666 and 6667 on 212.74.101.21. The other stuff I was expecting, but unexpected outbound traffic worries me. I don't know what that IP address points at, and I don't even know what those ports are used for. Can anyone help?

All this nonsense has been very time consuming. It's prevented me from doing very much else in my free time, and my weekend felt much shorter than it should have. I did not even load up the Quake bot. That's partly because It's become boringly good anyway. It was intruiging though. I think I'll visit the website when I get some time and have a bit more of a look into it.

Update (mid afternoon)...
You guys are amazing.

wonko says re May 27, 2002 : Ports 6666 and 6667 are IRC ports. If something is connecting to those ports without your permission, it's most likely a trojan being used for DDOS attacks or other such mischief. A good virus-scanner should be able to find and remove the trojan. I recommend Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

Thanks wonko. I'm really confused about how I got a virus though. I have not used IRC since I failed a unit (Nonlinear electronics) in the first year of uni because of it. I don't even have an IRC client on this box. Oh well. At least the firewall is blocking it for now. I'll make sure I scan the box thoroughly tonight. It's a shame that none of the decent virus scanners are free.

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