Hi, just a question.

I installed Firestarter on Ubuntu. It says under Events:

Inbound Total 0 Serious 149, and it just keeps going up.

Serious? How?

Here is a small section of the log Events blocked. Most seem to be China Telecom ( I'm in China ). Surely even the Chinese government can't be interested in me. Hacking Embassies, ok, but my little self?

Do you think I should alter my firewall at all? Assuming I knew how!

Time:Apr 5 13:58:31 Direction: Unknown Inpp0 Out: Port:5670 Source:116.233.18.4 Destination:58.212.224.202 Length:52 TOS:0x00 Protocol:TCP Service:Unknown
Time:Apr 5 13:58:31 Direction: Unknown Inpp0 Out: Port:15000 Source:121.204.48.230 Destination:58.212.224.202 Length:57 TOS:0x00 Protocol:UDP Service:Unknown
Time:Apr 5 13:58:31 Direction: Unknown Inpp0 Out: Port:80 Source:124.116.239.2 Destination:58.212.224.202 Length:48 TOS:0x00 Protocol:TCP Service:HTTP

Who put those smileys in there? Wasn't me!
I just copied and pasted from the log text file! Nasty!

To determine what constitutes "serious", you'd need to check the Firestarter documentation, as it's a subjective term. That said, having your IP get probed for open ports and the like is quite normal and expected. Maybe run a port scanner on yourself to see what your IP looks like to the bad guys (and to verify that your firewall is sane). Basically, if your firewall is reporting those packets as having been blocked, you're good to go since they never made it into your applications. Generally speaking, it's the ones which your firewall doesn't block that you need to worry about.

NOTE: There is an option to disable smilies when you post.