So now that the internet is working from home (cable connection) I now want to make sure I dont get hacked, sniffed, scanned or spoofed or whatever other evils can befall you on the net.

I read a lot about the vulnerabilities of being connected all-the-time (particularly from customers of my ISP).

I understand Fedora (my distro) comes with a default firewall (iptables?) which i'll investigate, but my question concerns switching off certain ports and so prevent hackers from exploiting my system.

My question then is - which ports do you block (and still have functional access to the internet) and how?

Thx

/Seb

If you don't run any webservers, ftp servers ore other services that need acces from outside, I suggets simply to bloc all ingoing connections. You won't need it.
using this, hacking your box becomes extremly difficult (but not imposible).
If you need to run a webserver, close all ports EXECPT port 80.