New
#1
Are firewalls really needed?
I was going crazy about Shields Up reporting that two ports were open until I found that Skype was the culprit as this happened only when Skype was running, otherwise all my ports were stealth. I found out that having an open port is not really a security concern as I read here:
Skype makes port 80 & 443 wide open to the public?! - Skype Community
In that same thread a member says:
"If your using NAT then your box is fine anyway, unless you have DMZ or port forwarding turned on.
When someone is trying to find out what your box is running they'll use a port scanner like nmap or something, they'll see what ports are open (like port 80 say) and then what O/S your running (they'll get this from the TCP fingerprint) and know what exploits are available for the O/S or more accurately the services running on the machine i.e. Apache on *nix variants IIS on Windows.
Anyways a firewall is a total waste of time for people that know whats running on their box, Firewalls are there for people who don't know how to admin their box properly i.e. Close off all your services and open the ones your only need and know that are secure.
My box only has 5190 (apache) and ssh running on a different port (latest patches. A firewall is useless for me anyway because i don't have anything running on any other ports.
Besides even if your are on a firewall anyone could still knock you offline with enough bandwidth (like zombie machines running trojans) or if they were on a 100meg atm link or something."
Do you agree with that statement?