Port 80 Problems?

[Shropshire Lad]

I've recently carried out one of my periodic port scans on my PC - every time I've carried it out preciously it shows all of my ports are stealthed. This time, however, it showed that Ports 80 and 443 were wide open. According to the site this was a "bad thing" and I should do all I can to rectify the situation. Unfortunately I can't! I have set my firewall to reject all inbound communications on this (which is working) but would like to know if anyone has any ideas as to how I can get back to stealthy ports?? I've got an o2 router if that's any help as I guess the firewall in the router is the problem?

Cheers

[Milo Minderbinder]

Steve Gibson by any chance?


If your router doesn't give you the option of closing those ports to incoming traffic, then a simple way round it simply to port forward any incoming requests on those ports to a local IP address thats invalid on your network

e.g if your network is in the range 192.168.0.x (and the subnet mask is 255.255.255.255
port forward incoming on ports 80 and 443 to 192.168.100.255
it should just black hole them

[Shropshire Lad]

Yes it was !

I can't actually access the firewall on the router as it appears to be set by the ISP with no way of getting into it. Though it does state that the standard setting its on does stealth all of the ports. My main concern is that I may have picked up a virus that is listening in, keeping the ports open as the same configuration about a year ago had all ports stealthed. I have set the PC firewall to block inbound traffic on the two ports (and have turned Skype off which was another suggestion) but can't get away from thinking my set up may be vulnerable?

[Milo Minderbinder]

no infection on the PC is going to affect the router - unless you have uPNP turned on, in which case I guess it could hold a port open.
I suspect its more likely that some kind of auto update on the router has made the change or.....theres a small (very very small) chance the router has been hacked.
It being an O2 supplied unit, its presumably preconfigured to your account settings, so simply try resetting it back to defaults. It should simply then revert to how it was
Otherwise, all you can do is what I suggested - ignore the firewall settings and instead "blackhole" the open ports by using the port forwarding capabilities.


PS Steve G tends to deal a lot in hyperbole - after all he has to justify the products he sells from that website somehow. If you've ever spoken to him you'll understand what I mean......most of what he says has an element of truth, he just goes totally OTT with what he says

[Shropshire Lad]

The web site I used did suggest that having these ports unstealthed was akin to an internet Armageddon! ;)

I shall try a router reset and see what happens - thanks.

[Shropshire Lad]

There we go - a full reset of the router and we're back to all stealthy again! Fab - thanks Milo.