Is it possible to be hacked or infected when at a safe website when firewall and antivirus are off?

I have a dinosaur for a computer and need to turn off my firewall and antivirus in order to watch video from ABC.com.

Can my computer be hacked or infected by a virus if my browser is at a safe site when my firewall and antivirus are off? Does my browser even need to be open in order to be hacked or infected?

 

You can get infected from anything; emails, Internet sites, USB drives, CDs, etc. Why do you need to turn off your security to watch videos? Can you not let your browser through the firewall?

 

you should be fine in turning off your antivirus if you are at a safe site. While it is POSSIBLE to be infected, the chances are remote.

 

The firewall and antivirus slow down the video. The video runs smoother when both are off.

What about hacked?

 

Yes, it is theoretically possible. But I think your chances are very remote. That is the short answer. We can give you the long answer if you are willing to listen to us talk about stacks, heaps, ASLR, and the difference between exploits and bugs.

 

define hacked? viruses can take control of ur pc so if your infected ur already hacked

 

hahahaha.

You can tell if your computer displaying by itself?

 

It's possible to get a virus or "hacked" even if you have the best antivirus in the world.

You should be fine without any antivirus or firewall if you're only visit "safe" sites. Just backup your data on your "dinosaur" computer.

I don't really use antivirus and i haven't gotten a single virus in the past 5 years.

 

there is nothing like a "safe site".

the latest site owner who was wondering why the hell his site shows framer infection was running some local hostel site, earlier interesting cases were a progrock site with some exploit, hats producer site or beekeepers club site. of course, none of the sites runners added the exploit/virus intentionally. even sites which look like "safe" get infected from time to time - by hackers.

conclusion:
- there is nothing like "safe site", even if it's not infected at one moment, it can become 5 minutes after you turn your AV off (yes, that would be a bad luck )
- it does not matter what sites you visit to decide if you should or should not disable your firewall; anytime you disable it, you open your computer for access from outside, so that anyone (who knows how) can get your personal data, or send you some really unwanted data.

i'd suggest to optimize the dinosaur, so that it can work well with both FW an AV enabled.

really? how do you know if there's nothing what would detect possible infection?

 

Well, the "safe" site could itself be hacked to deliver malware to users of that site.

And with the firewall off... it doesn't matter what site you're on... anyone from anywhere on the internet can try to connect to your computer... and if there are vulnerabilities in your OS, they may succeed.

BUT... if you're behind another firewall, for example on your router, and that's on, then you should be ok firewall-wise.

Basically you need some firewall, whether on your computer or elsewhere between your computer and the internet... and keep your OS and browser up-to-date with the latest patches.

Turning off antivirus isn't all that bad, if you're on a trusted site, but you do still increase your risk a little bit.

 

I run virus scans with norton corporate through the network once every couple month with the latest virus definition . I don't have any antivirus installed on my computers except for one "server" in vmware. So far, i havent found any viruses on any of my computers.

 

Your conclusion doesn't tell the whole story.

The chances that ABC.com is hacked to exploit your computer and it is now recording your keystrokes as soon as you hit that video??

You'll get struck by lightning before that happens.

For a hacker to hack ABC.com, they will have to pass through multiple firewalls. Next, they will need access to a bug and then exploit designed specifically to attack your type of browser and OS. And then it has to avoid detection from your brand of Anti-Virus as it goes to sweep your computer. The chances that an exploit capable of knocking down that many levels of security without any user intervention is highly highly unlikely.

Seriously, ya'll are presenting doomsday information with little to back it up.

 

More likely than the above described scenario (a hacker going through all the hoops to infect a video on ABC.com) is the simple situation where 3rd party ads/banners, shown on ABC.com pages, are the source of infections.
Clicking on such an ad can trigger a drive-by trojan download, some of which are very hard to detect or protect against.
In such a scenario, even 'safe' websites 'host' malware.

 

This is more likely the case. Suspect advertisements are far more likely to host websites that will exploit your computer.

 

seriously... i know something about this. simple hidden i-f-r-a-m-e (geez the word is censored... but for a reason, fair enough) in the source code... nothing more is needed. you don't need to hit anything, your browser will attempt to load the contents of the i-word... and voila, malware was delivered.

we discuss if antivirus needs to be enabled, and i say yes, it does - so that your computer is not the weakest thing in the chain.

i've never met anyone struck by lightning, but i've talked to a bunch of people struck by an exploit or something similar. ABC.com and multiple firewalls... well, it sounds like a challenge for hackers, doesn't it? don't you know that even antivirus vendors' sites were hacked lately? it was discussed here as well.

 

Like I said, before. Lets look at ABC.com and see they can inject an attack. Oh wait, they gotta hack into ABC.com's web server backend. The chances of an attack is unlikely on ABC.com. That kind of attack is yesterday's news.

These are known attack vectors that have been patched for years.

 

hacking Pentagon was unlikely, too.

this world is not the safest thing under the sun

 

An appeal to probability then would keep us safe?

 

appeal to probability? eh, rather prevention.

 

Unfortunately, what entropy.cz describes is completely real.
Infections through your browser, simply by visiting a website and not clicking on anything, are possible through the mentioned I-frames.
What might 'read' as an I-frame link to a gif file or simply jibberish ( example), could be obfuscated javascript code telling the browser to download a trojan.
Which it will merily do.
If one is adamant about not using a firewall and AV, consider using SandboxIE or GesWall in order to restrict/isolate your browser or use the Firefox extension NoScript, to effectively block scripts, I-Frames, Flash etc.
Cheers.