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Is it true that NAT routers and firewalls block viruses but do not block hackers?
I recently had a conversation with someone on the Yahoo Customer Service Help Desk after I had a problem with my email account. During the conversation the following 'facts' were announced by this person:
1) NAT Routers and Firewalls are there to block viruses from getting onto the private network. They do not offer any protection against hackers getting passed them.
2) My network had been hacked. [Kaspersky Internet Security and Malwarebytes, both with the latest signature files, reported no infections on the computer]. When I told him this he said, no the hack is on your network not on the actual computer.
I actually have two cascaded NAT routers as the first one provides a guest network for visitors and the second router protects my own computers from any guest activity. Neither router has DMZ or any port forwarding enabled, and UPnP is turned off in both routers.
The final point that clashed with what the guy had previously said was that he could connect to my computer (if I let him) and remove the problem from the computer. I declined.
It has since become apparent that the problem is one of the many bugs in the Yahoo site.
Has anyone else had similar advice from Yahoo Customer Service? Maybe this sort of advice is why they say the help is always free.
I never tell anyone my passwords, even my immediate family. Usernames for email accounts are rarely secret as they are normally the actual email address.
The particular email account that had a problem had been created less than two minutes before the problem occurred. Yahoo's help desk guy said the problem was because the account had been hacked by someone from Nigeria. The computer is clean according to top rated virus and malware scanners.
I never use social media sites.
3 Answers
- Robert JLv 75 years ago
A NAT firewall stops _unsolicited_ connections to anything inside your network, from the public internet side.
It only allows reply data from sites where some program on a machine inside the network has requested data, and then routes the reply to that specific machine.
They categorically do block intrusion/cracking attempts.
They cannot protect against "invited" malicious stuff such as drive-by compromise code in a web site - you bring that in yourself by viewing the web page.
That's what antivirus & antimalware software on your machine are supposed to protect against.
"Phishing" emails / web sites are another problem; if anyone gets taken in and goes to a fake web site, nothing can protect you; you are voluntarily giving away your security info, even if you do not realise it..
[Electronics designer & programmer for 40+ years].
- Me2Lv 75 years ago
"guy had previously said was that he could connect to my computer (if I let him) and remove the problem"
I very much doubt that you contacted Yahoo customer support. That was almost certainly a scam operator that had spread bogus contact information falsely claiming to be Yahoo.
