BleepingComputer.com: IP Adress hijacked

we are set u on network using a router with modem connected to cable internet
Today one of the family was playing Halo there was a disagreement in the game a warning was sent "I am going to hack you"
We lost our internet connection was the explanation we got was this individual took our ISP address.
We called our ISP prodiver and the first response was they never heard of that... than later admitted something like could happen.We were told to shut down our connection for 3 hours and then re start to get a ISP address.

I am not sure exactly what happened - I do noticed that my connection is slower than normal

How do I prevent it from happening in the future?
I am running Norton Anti Virus 2009 and windows fire wall

This post has been edited by garmanma: 14 October 2008 - 07:57 AM
Reason for edit: Moved to appropriate forum-mark

Basically what happend to you was something called IP "Flooding." What this means is that the person who did this to you has an army of infected or "zombie" PCs that will send out loads of information at his own will to your IP address when he types it into the program. What this does is in a sense is overload your bandwith with to much information to process and ultimately causes a DoS (denial of service). This type of attack is the most common type of hack. Your ISP was correct by telling you to restart your connection, which will give you a new IP address which means that since his attack is still being sent to your old IP, it will no longer effect you. Your connection may still be slow as it is recovering from a severe attack. Another possible reason is that some ISP's have bandwith caps, meaning if you go over they will "punish" you with a lower bandwith for a certain amount of time. I know as a fact you are a victim of IP flooding because I too play halo and this sort of thing happens everyday. Basically the best thing to do is to not talk to people you do not know so they have no reason to want to do this to you. Another more extreme prevention technique would be to use a proxy server to route your IP so instead of going from the ISP straight to you it goes from your ISP to a server and then to you. What this does is makes it so that when the person searches for your IP they get the servers instead of your own (basically you are hiding behind the server).a

i got several question, how did that HALO player got a hold of his IP in the first place?[and prevent similar event in the future]. how do you get a proxy server and wouldnt that degrade your connection?

there are programs called IP sniffers that hijack all traffic going to their xbox, and relay it to their computer so they can see all the ips they are connected to.

here is a bit more information on a proxy server: http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/i...-a-proxy-server

although that site doesnt tell you how to set it up with your xbox 360, you just manually set the dns server on your box as the proxy server address.

and the normal pc user would not see a significant performance decrease by using a proxy..if you get a good proxy you should see minimal to no speed change at all

This post has been edited by Johnny Boy: 19 October 2008 - 12:39 PM

so, thats why never tell anyone whats your computer's IP address....ever.

well not neccessarily your computers IP address but your modems external IP address