I have read in several post and oth 2

[PhilippeSignoret]

I have read in several post and other parts of the web that ports 137 and 139 are dangerous if they are listening. I did

netstat -an

and found this:

TCP    myip:137    0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
TCP    myip:138    0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING
TCP    myip:139    0.0.0.0:0              LISTENING

Why are these ports dangerous? What virus, backdoor, etc uses them? Is there a way to close them without getting a firewall? Can I close the port with Winsock in VB?

Thanks,
Philippe

 

[PhilippeSignoret]

LoL, took me forever to get the formating right and I forget to put a subject! I am bad...

 

[pansophic]

Ports 135 through 139 are dangerous because they are the ports that are used by Windows networking. All file and printer sharing and user account enumeration is performed through these ports, so you cannot do Windows networking without having them open. But you don't want to open them to the internet. That is why you see so many posts about using firewalls to protect them.

You can close them if you use multiple NICs (or dial-up access to the internet) by removing the binding of Windows networking to that interface. As a general rule, only the application that opened the port is capable of closing it.
pansophic

 

[PhilippeSignoret]

Can you translate
You can close them if you use multiple NICs (or dial-up access to the internet) by removing the binding of Windows networking to that interface.
to English please (simplyfy it) .

Sadly enough, I use AOL on this computer.

-Philippe

 

[jimbopalmer]

Lets imagine you NEED windows networking locally with other computers in the building and you NEED aol access via dial up.


you can bind TCP to the dial up adaptors, (AOL has one of their own), but do NOT need to bind Microsoft clients to dial up.

the ethernet adaptor may ONLY need the Microsoft clients if it is a small network, or it may need TCP as well, if there are many users on the ethernet. I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.

 

[c0i0nes]

If you go to

http://grc.com,

Steve Gibson has written at length on securing your Windows against internet exploits on his "Shields Up" pages, as well as safe tests that you can run on your own system over the net.

 

[Grenage]

Hmm. Don't put too much faith in GRC security scans alone. I've received different results from the same computer with the same configuration a few times, and on a system running a webserver I was apparently fully stealthed.

Still, it's ok 90% of the time