On 05/06/13 13:57, Mark Rogers wrote:
On 5 June 2013 11:41, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
The ports that are appearing as closed are: 135, 137, 138, 139, 445
Solved. It's my ISP. They started blocking these ports for everyone.
Interesting that the ports they've had to block are all standard Windows ports (mostly for file sharing).
Surely most home users are sitting behind a router that wouldn't be forwarding these anyway, so I wonder what is the reason for having to block them? Are people opening ports on their routers to allow file sharing, or is there another reason why this would be enough of a vulnerability to justify blocking ISP-wide?
Those ports were used by particularly virulent viruses or trojan horses so many ISPs have blocked them. The potential threat is still out there on older machines, but I don't get why my ISP recently started blocking those ports. I found a thread that said they were blocked, and that they soon will be unblocked, but I have yet to find out why the change. I wonder if it's related to the UPnP vulnerability I posted about elsewhere. That vunerability has made me wonder what some manufacturers have been doing with their routers, so I wouldn't rule out anything ATM!
Steve