Re: Closing open ports in windows 98SE

From: Christa Bartsch (bartschc_at_web.de)
Date: 01/08/04 

Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 16:02:25 +0100

On 08.01.2004 11:33 Scrubbs wrote:

> I think Steve Gibson's site is a great resource. What I was really
> looking for, though, was a means of selectively closing individual ports
> - not speaking here of 135-139, or even port 445, which are already
> closed. And yes I do use a firewall already. However it's good practice
> to close down unwanted and unneeded ports; e.g rpc (remote procedure
> call) and others. It seems that this is not possible in windows98 (or in
> XP for that matter).
>
> Linux advocates point to their ability to close down whatever port they
> like, either on a single machine or selectively on a local network of
> PCs.
>
> I was wondering it this was possible in windows. Seems it isn't (?)
>
> /Scrubbs

As far as I understand: A port will be closed if no sercice or
application at this port is listening. The command "netstat -a" or
TCPView by www.sysinternals.com will show any process doing that by
listing the ports. Without your browser or any other internet
application opened there should be nothing even if you're connected to
the internet. If a request (be it a virus or any other internet traffic)
to a port arrives (just think of someone knocking at your door) the
answer will be like "I'm here, but I'm buying nothing." The end.

If you followed Steve Gibson's advice all ports should be closed and
will only be opened again if an application such as your browser needs
it. This is what you can do with all windows computers and they will be
less vulnerable to exploits.

IMHO If you are not running web or mail servers you do not need what
linux is able to. But you should ask someone who knows more about linux
than I do.

Christa Bartsch

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