It is therefor recommended to regularly check the open ports for computer security reasons. We reviewed CurrPorts (see: Who is connected to your PC right now) a while ago. It is a portable Nirsoft application that will display the open ports along with information needed to conclude if the open ports are needed or not.

My Ports is another application for that purpose. There is not really a big difference between both programs we’d figure it would be nice to have an alternative at hand. My Ports displays all open ports in a list after startup. It uses a table to display various information about each open port on the computer system including the state, local and remote IP address, local and remote port, process name that is listening or using that connection and the process path to that application. It is not as sophisticated as CurrPorts but it does its job just fine.

Most of the open connections can be easily associated with one specific program like Firefox or Skye in the screenshot above. Other ports are listening due to Windows Services or other services that are running. These usually require some investigation on the user’s part to find out if they are needed to operate the computer system. A search on the Internet usually reveals websites that contain information and advice on how to deal with those connections.

My Ports is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Port forwarding can be configured in the router or traffic controlling device. It basically consists of telling the router route to send incoming traffic to a specific computer by specifying a port and IP address.

One of easiest ways to check if a port is properly forwarded is to use an online port checker like the one provided by uTorrent. To verify the port forwarding open the following url in your web browser http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=1337 and change the number at the end to the port that you want to forward.

The script will check if the port is forwarded properly:

The above screen is displaying that the port forwarding has been properly configured. It will display that an error has occured. The port forwarding test can be repeated after adjusting the configuration settings.

Simple Port Forwarding is a portable software that tries to lessen the knowledge that is needed to configure port forwarding in a computer network. Port Forwarding on the other hand is only a issue of the computers connect to a router that establishes the connection to the Internet.

It basically tells the router where to send information that are being received on a specific port. The software currently supports 197 different routers and the software developer provides the means to suggest new routers if the current router is not available in the list.

Among the support routers are several popular brands like Zyxel, Belkin, Netgear or LinkSys. All the user needs to do is pick his router from the list of available ones and enter the username and password which are used to connect to the admin interface.

Simple Port Forwarding will automatically enter the default values which can be used if the values have not been changed.

The port forwarding software comes with a database of 677 programs that can be automatically added. This includes applications like Yahoo Messenger, Telnet and Teamspeak but mainly games like Age of Conan, Stalker or World of Warcraft.

If the application is not in the list it has to be added manually. All that needs to be done by the user is to pick a name, select a connection type and the start and end port.

The information can then be updated in the router by clicking on the Update Router button. The main advantage of Simple Port Forwarding is the interface and the database that contains lots of popular programs.

The first and one of the most important steps would be to download and install the latest security fixes and services packs. I sometimes have to talk to users in my job (which is somewhat security related as well) and discover that they run Windows XP with the same settings that the pc was shipped with. No updates, outdated anti-virus definitions and the like. You do get the latest patches and fixes for your operating system at windowsupdates.

Make sure you have a valid license otherwise you will not be able to download the updates. A different way would be to use autopatcher which can be downloaded in a version that includes all the updates and fixes already.

The next step would be to turn off unnecessary services and programs that you won’t use. Why should the remote service be active if you never use it ? This reduces the chance of an attacker to get into the system. There are currently 19 services running on my system, if you never tinkered with them before you have probably double that size or even more.

Read the article about turning unnecessary services off, it explains the basics. It is a good idea to turn of the following services if you do not need them

• Telnet
• Universal Plug and Play Device Host
• IIS (not installed by default)
• Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Registry
• Routing & Remote Access
• SSDP Discovery Service

Talking about software. It is wise to not use the default Microsoft products like Outlook Express or Internet Explorer. Those are attacked the most because most of the users use them. (besides offering great ways of attacking them) Alternatives would be Firefox or Opera for Internet Explorer and Thunderbird for Outlook Express.

You should install a anti-virus solution. I do use Antivir but others should be fine as well. The most important aspect is that you keep the definition files up to date. If the software offers automatic updates I suggest you make it update the files once a day.

Firewalls. I do not use them. Well, not a software based firewall that is. I do have a hardware firewall which is all I need. I think that firewalls give the user a false sense of security. They are highly complex and require lots of attention to secure the system. It is not enough to simply install one and click on accept / deny every time a program wants to connect to the internet.

To secure the system you have to add all the tools that should have internet access to the firewall rules with exactly the ports they need. You should close every other port that is not needed by those applications. A good freeware that displays the list of currently open ports is currports.

I think those are the most important steps. If you have more let me know them.

The freeware requires no installation and does not change the system, just run it using the windows run command. Every user that is logged on can use the application, that´s right even guests can use it. Another great tool that uses a gui is Currports. Just follow the link if you like it.

You run it by opening your command prompt and typing netstat. Its highly customizable using switches like netstat -a. Its mainly used to get a quick overview on whats happening on your system connection wise.

The introduction to netstat tutorial is a good essay that features all netstat options and explains the output.

In addition, CurrPorts allows you to close unwanted TCP connections, kill the process that opened the ports, and save the TCP/UDP ports information to HTML file , XML file, or to tab-delimited text file.

CurrPorts also automatically mark with pink color suspicious TCP/UDP ports owned by unidentified applications (Applications without version information and icons)

#only 36K, freeware, no system changes, download and run
#runs on all windows versions but older versions show less details

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