Security Risks of Port Forwarding
- Thread starter Conrad11
- Start date
It depends what services you're running on the machine you're port forwarding to.
If you're running Apache or IIS and you port forward port 80, obviously port 80 is exposed to the internet and people from the outside world will be able to connect to the server. This has implications in that you should keep the software patched up to date and be aware of any security vulnerability patches released for the likes of PHPBB hosted on the server.
As with anything, the safest computer is one not connected to the internet at all!
If you're running Apache or IIS and you port forward port 80, obviously port 80 is exposed to the internet and people from the outside world will be able to connect to the server. This has implications in that you should keep the software patched up to date and be aware of any security vulnerability patches released for the likes of PHPBB hosted on the server.
As with anything, the safest computer is one not connected to the internet at all!
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 3,941
- Location
- West Midlands
Conrad11 said:
Port forwarding directs traffic to a single port or port range to a host on the private network. The security risks are based on what ports you allow outside access too. Standard services such as POP3, SMTP and HTTP ports 110, 25, 80 respectivly, these would give an outside user reason to believe a webserver or email server is running on the internal network which if configured correctly doesnt present a security risk.
If you were to say open port 3389 RDP then this would give an outside user something to probe at as they can now make a legitimate connection to the internal host using a TS client and then start on your password, and so on youll get the idea.
Last edited: