I installed MDK2006 and left the firewall pretty much default. I turned it on and allowed pings (wasnt sure if it was needed so allowed it). However i am wondering now if this means I am secure? Or do I need to mess around with firewall to get it to work. I get messages popping up saying ip address xxx.xxx.xxx has port scanned port xxxx. Howeve this doesnt really give much information to someone with no understanding of it. Will the default setup when you just have the firewall turned on be secure (i know i need to turn off services i dont use like ssl, ssh, cups etc etc). Im just a little confused. If not does anyone have alink that has instructions on the procedure. I went to the sygate onlne securty scanner and did a few basic scans but they all returned error. So i dont know if its working or not.

Michael

Sounds like this machine is directly connected to the internet with no router in between.
If so goto http://www.hackerwatch.org/probe to scan for open ports.

You can run any service. The firewall blocks connections to the port based on the interface. So many services can be available to localhost but closed on eth0

Brian1

You don't need to turn the firewall on necessarily. If you checked the box at the top you turned everything off.