Networking :: Security Questions
I agree 100% regarding a firewall not being overkill, I have a dedicated firewall myself.
However, I bet the "open ports" look siginificantly different if done from another box against that one.
You are showing what connections you initiated, and the x server ports do not show up like that from the outside.
It would be super rare for a hacker to waste his/her time on a *nix box with no ports open and no promise of a golden treasure on the inside.
"I think the X client/server connections are exposed to attacks"
I looks like all the connections are to the /tmp or /var folders on your ramdisk.
As long as there is no access to the harddisk, that shouldn't be a problem (from what little I know, anyway).
I just ran a couple of available security checks, and got the following results:
https://tau.hackerwhacker.com/quickscan.php Test site
No open ports found
http://www.auditmypc.com:
We completed the audit and did not find any open ports.
This is ideal for the average visitor.
Shields Up: https://www.grc.com/:
unsolicited Packets: PASSED ? No Internet packets of any sort were received from your system as a side-effect of our attempts to elicit some response from any of the ports listed above. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system remained wisely silent. (Except for the fact that not all of its ports are completely stealthed as shown below.)
Ping Echo: PASSED ? Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests) from our server.
GRC Port Authority Report created on UTC: 2006-04-22 at 19:52:19
Results from scan of ports: 0, 21-23, 25, 79, 80, 110, 113,
119, 135, 139, 143, 389, 443, 445,
1002, 1024-1030, 1720, 5000
0 Ports Open
1 Ports Closed
25 Ports Stealth
---------------------
26 Ports Tested
NO PORTS were found to be OPEN.
The port found to be CLOSED was: 113
Other than what is listed above, all ports are STEALTH.
___
Thought I would throw 2 more cents into the pot.
It is just easier to setup a good firewall on linux because it is free(download the iptables.dsl). So there is no excuse for not learning how to setup iptables. Then you are reasonably sure that you are safe. Its good enough for the fortune 100 companies.
Something is always better then nothing.
Always use protection
jpeters,
try to run a security test from within your LAN on a shared hub and then we talk about it.
I guess, if you want complete security traded with performance, run DSL in QEMU, which acts as a gateway/firewall. That's what I do. Slow but secure.
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