Hi,

I had VNC turned on for uninvited connections and X running with --nolisten option.

When I got home one day, I saw someone trying to TAKE OVER my computer
infront of my eyes!

Immediately I turned VNC off and restarted my computer, and even turned my IP updater
off to stop updating my dynamic DYNDNS domain name to point to my Ip #.

Nevertheless, after restarting (and getting a new IP # ofcurse) - the dude STILL HAD ACCESS
to my computer!

I logged out X, and it stopped (?). In the terminal there was no intruder...

I am running Gentoo, without IPTABLES running. Ofcurse I downloaded it, and will try
to set it up as soon as possible.

Any advice of how to keep my computer secured?!

Thanks.
FIO

plz never do that for your own sake.

Use a firewall(shorewall, etc...) , if iptables is taking too much time to setup, download a simple iptable script among those available on the net. Never turn off the firewall unless you are not connected to the internet.

For whatever server you are running, if there is a password you can set, don't leave it blank. don't let services/servers you don't need running. You could replace VNC by SSH.

do not login as root to start X. Do not use root account for something different than system/server administration.

There must be a tutorial/notes on security for gentoo, isn't there one at gentoo website??? it should be the first place to look at. Gentoo documentation is good.

Being able to setup dyndns, i suppose you are not a "real newbie"...

You don't need to kill VNC if you don't want to - VNC can be relatively safe if you really want to use it. Just set up a VPN server so that traffic and access to the VNC server will be secured, make VNC available through VPN, and block the port from the public ip on your firewall (you can use iptable as previously mentioned).