the default windows firewall is an incoming traffic only firewall. so if a trojan or some spyware or something like that is on your computer it can contact the mothership all it wants without you knowing it. ZoneAlarm is two way and will notify you of unknown outgoing traffic.
Most of my experience with hackers and what they do came from examining the access logs of a webserver that had a root kit installed on it. it had no sensitive data, so i dont know if they are out looking for cc info. The server was a kind of forgotten about webserver for the company i work for, so it was up for 4 months after it got hacked.
It seemed like chinese hackers got into the machine and put the root kit in. they then started an open proxy. Most of the chinese using the open proxy were using it to access fairly inoccuous websites (us immigration, news sites, encyclopedia sites) that must have been blocked in china.
Then somehow Germans started getting hold of the open proxy. They were bouncing lots of porn traffic off the server. Those germans are some filthy, filthy people. They were looking at sites that would have made Punani blush.
Finally the American spammers got ahold of it. when the isp noticed the extent of the traffic, the server was starting to bring the whole isp down because 15k email messages per minute were bouncing off the server. Thats when we pulled the server. It was fun to poke through the access logs thought and see the amount of traffic that had been passing through the machine.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Ben Franklin
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