On Apr 15, 2005, at 4:04 PM, Ted Treen wrote:
Hi all,
Out of curiosity, I ran through ShieldsUp at http://www.grc.com/
I got an almost perfect "Stealth" report except for:-
My Mac reports ports 0 and 1 as existing but closed to connections - all other ports are effectively stealth - no response at all.
I reply to a ping.
Could someone more knowledgeable than I am please advise me:- 1) Should I be worried?
No. If you respond to a ping, you could be hit with a denial-of-service attack, but that's all. Moreover, the ability to deal with ICMP floods is better handled farther up the network food chain, ie: your ISP.
My system 'failed' that test, despite not a single one of the ports tested being open. Why? because they actually responded and said they were closed. This means I could be hit with a DOS attack. Big effing deal. I get DOS'ed, I reset my modem and get another IP address.
DOS attacks are only a problem if the system you're using has a fixed IP address, and that's the only thing at issue here. If some 'hacker' wants to waste cycles DOS-ing a dynamic IP address, well, they're using not those cycles on something that could actually hurt.
My advice, is to ignore these 'sky is falling' sites.
With a default install of OS X, nothing is open, you can't really be attacked. With OS 9, there's nothing TO attack.
After all it's not like Windows that ships with all the doors and windows <ba-dump> open saying "Me! ME! Hack Me! Hack ME!"
-- Bruce Johnson
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