"Portscan Attack" From My Dell Desktop To My MacBook Pro

For some reason. Norton Antivirus on my MacBook Pro is saying that about every ten minutes I'm getting a "portscan attack" from the IP address of my Dell desktop. Anybody have any idea how to solve this?

 

Easy, uninstall the damm Norton, useless software, anyway.

 

Why cant PC and Mac just get along...

 

Looks like you got a virus called Norton, to fix your problem just simply remove this virus.

Anti viruses on Mac are useless because not enough people use them, so if there is a new virus/trojan out there, your anti virus won't do anything, because it won't be in it's data base yet. I think it's funny that people that have anti virus think that they will never get a virus, but if it's a new virus that the anti virus does not know it will get past it.

 

So there's no real problem?

 

Useful hints above - come on people, offer something constructive besides bashing the software Michael's using

If your MBP and Dell are on the same WLAN, this may be an issue with the desktop querying the MBP and trying to access a shared folder or something; which yes, would be nothing to worry about if the IP address checks out as being the desktop. However, since I don't use Norton I am unsure how to necessarily track this down or resolve it so NAV stops bothering you - I know it would annoy me to no end. Most ISS software often will have some option to whitelist IP addresses or ports, so that's where I might think about starting your quest to make NAV quiet down.... I thought all Norton products for Mac included a version of Norton's firewall, and your symptoms sound like that's what's being triggered every 10 minutes with the portscan alert.

 

Would that take away network performance or anything?

 

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was the old "master browser" entries in XP logs. I don't know the mechanics of how this works, but I remember seeing Event Log entries where one system had established itself as the master browser for the network, and the fact that it had done so was logged. I assume, then, that XP was scanning for other systems on the network and maybe that's what your Mac is seeing. This is pure speculation and I don't know if Vista (if your Dell is running Vista) does the same thing. Edited to add: MS reports that the master browser checks are performed once every 12 minutes and that roughly matches your events; MS reference is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188001

 

Had the same problem with Norton installed on my Windows PC. I was trying to host a game of L4D (BootCamp on my MBP), and that dang error kept popping up.

I just disabled Norton.

 

Unless, of course, you use an AV/malware program that is proactive and immediately identifies sites or programs with malicious code (that's already been identified) BEFORE it gives you the option to proceed. So true, new viruses (virii?) might get in, but you can sure prevent a lot of older viruses/malware/spyware from disrupting your world. And to pretend that Macs aren't targets isn't doing yourself justice...scumbags are scumbags and will take advantage of anyone they can...