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"Security on a network"

Question: How secure is Windows when it comes to having a router based network with three computers, and file and printer sharing enabled on each of them? How easy would a hacker find it to access the shared files, and could they use that to gain access to the entire hard drive (even if it wasn't shared), and is there any way a firewall on the computers would help?

Urgh jesus.

No.

Well I do use Kazaa. Would having this enabled open up my computer at all?

You only need to enable port forwarding if something you're using explictely requires or could use it. Mostly this is peer2peer software such as KaZaA and eMule (eMule is 5662/tcp and 4672/udp, I think KaZaA is 4617 or something like that). You could also need portforwarding if you were running a webserver, in order to receive incoming connection to your webserver behind NAT you'd need to forward port 80.

Miserableman wrote:
> without port-forwarding enabled.

Actually, what is port forwarding? Is it the same as port redirection? if so my manual is not exactly explanative, but seems to contradict what you say (or what I interprit from what you say)
It says:
The port redirection feature of the router is used in conjunction with NAT or IP masquerading to improve security and effenciancy.

So, um, is this port forwarding thing best to be enabled or not, and what exactly does it do?

That's very helpful. Thanks.

Turbonutter wrote:
> Put it this way: If you had madl33t kacking skillz would you be
> wasting your time jacking random lamers' files on some punkass 3
> computer network?


I dunno, the first guy I ever met on irc confessed the other day that a couple of years ago he hacked my (then) Windows 98 machine and managed to read my girlfriends CV, heh.

But yes, the trick to avoid getting hacked is to present a difficult wall to climb. And a hardware router with ICS running and some kind of firewall presents a pretty slippery challenge. And while you may think there are one million and one script kiddies out there who want to delete your mp3 collection personally, the fact is that most hacking is done by bulk - a script scans every computer in an ip range (which may contain thousands of machines), and reports back to its master only the ones that look interesting i.e. vulnerable. So one of the best security techniques is to play dead, and not to look interesting, which routers are generally pretty good at.

Put it this way: If you had madl33t kacking skillz would you be wasting your time jacking random lamers' files on some punkass 3 computer network?

If there's a router between your Windows PC's and the internet and that router is connection sharing, then by-and-large you're safe. Due to the way connection sharing works, it's impossible to make a connection from the outside world to an individual computer inside, without port-forwarding enabled.

Question: How secure is Windows when it comes to having a router based network with three computers, and file and printer sharing enabled on each of them? How easy would a hacker find it to access the shared files, and could they use that to gain access to the entire hard drive (even if it wasn't shared), and is there any way a firewall on the computers would help?