topic Re: closing ports in PCs & Accessories

closing ports

reaper — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 14:56:06 GMT

hi

i have norton fire wall installed and everything but the internet check says im at risk due to to ports one a ping and another a http or something

i was woundering if any one knows how to shut them

regards ben

Re: closing ports

kee-lo_ — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:03:04 GMT

Does it tell you exactly which ports? Because if you close ports 80 or 21 you won't be able to use FTP or HTTP.

Re: closing ports

reaper — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:18:04 GMT

hi kee-lo

it says icmp ping status open

port 80 status open

all the rest are either closed or in stealth

regards ben

Re: closing ports

reaper — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:19:41 GMT

sorry missed one

port 1025 unused windows services block

Re: closing ports

kee-lo_ — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 15:23:23 GMT

Port 80 is for http requests, so I'd leave that one.
Port 1025 is used by Messenger, your choice there.
Not sure about the other one.

Re: closing ports

vaiodon — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:49:35 GMT

The important thing to understand is what connections the firewall permits inbound and outbound.

Ideally, you don't want anything open inbound (i.e no-one should be able to connect directly to your PC from the net) but ICMP ping isn't risky in itself. ICMP ping will allow anyone on the Internet to find out that your PC is online, subsequently, they might try to exploit other vunerabilities.

Currently, M$ (microsoft) release their security updates every month around the 15th - keep a check on the Windows update site.

Note Kazaa and Skype require you to allow inbound connections as they are peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. There's a big risk that you could let a lot of garbage in via those doors.

Outbound connections should be locked down to those protocol/TCP port destinations you need access to: dns, http/80 and https/443, ftp/21 (UDP and TCP), pop3/110 and smtp/25 for email and whatever for IM (don't use it so don't know the ports).

WinXP SP2 will make Norton and other firewalls redundant when it's released (next month) - WinXP Internet Connection Firewall has been re-vamped, will be enabled by default & all unnecessary services are disabled by default.

Re: closing ports

kee-lo_ — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 13:13:12 GMT

WinXP SP2 will make Norton and other firewalls redundant when it's released (next month) - WinXP Internet Connection Firewall has been re-vamped,  will be enabled by default & all unnecessary  services are disabled by default.

Yes hopefuly then we'll have less problems with people picking up trojans and spreading it like wildfire.