Problem with NIS allowing IP pings

I've used NIS for a couple of years now with excellent results and frequently do routine port scan using the Shields Up! website, which many of you are familiar with. For the first time I can recall in years, yesterday I failed the ping portion of that stealth test although it showed all my ports to be in optimum stealth status. When I immediately re-did a test a few times, I passed and assume that's due to the NIS firewall actively blocking that particular Shields Up! IP address.

 

How could the default setting for auto-blocking pings have changed in NIS where this might have occurred? I certainly made no such changes and frankly wouldn't know how to even if I wanted to. How can I check to see?

 

Two things I need to mention that recently have changed on my system: The first is I installed the recommended out-of-band MS update that made available on 21 January. The second is an update to Real Player. Both of these were done before  performing the latest port scan on GRC that failed.

 

Secondly: For whatever reason, I had an issue with using the GUI performance function yesterday. When hitting the arrow on the screen , the GUI  rotated as it normally does and took me to the performance graph for my PC but there was no arrow present for me to return to the main screen in the usual manner. Strange, huh? Had to close out the window using the "X" in the upper right corner. Hope I'm explaining this correctly as I've never seen this particular problem ever before. Within a few hours and after a few auto updates,  apparently the problem was corrected and the feature has returned to normal.

 

Could there have been a corrupt NIS update somehow which not only affected the default blocking of pings in NIS but also affected the feature for checking performance history? I know those two shouldn't be related but it's the only thing I can think of at the moment.

 

BTW: Rebooted a few times and also recycled the DSL modem I've used for a couple of years (I'm not using a router) and the ping problem still exists. I realize I'm still protected as my ports are all in stealth mode due to NIS, but certainly would like to know what happened and return to having pings automatically blocked.

 

I'm using Vista Ultimate with IE8 and Firefox 3.6 with all the latest updates; tried the GRC test with both browsers and got the same problematic results involving the ping. My NIS 2010 version is 17.5.0.127 and I've used this version without any problems since its release.

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

Hi scelli:

 

I understand that you are not using a Router and that is OK.

 

This sometimes happens with PING as it is a ICMP Echo Request and is nothing to worry about.  From what I have read you have all ports stealthed in NIS. You might wish to double check this to be sure.

 

When you go to GRC, what does it "mark" the port as? Open or Closed?

 

Please advise.

 

 

Thanks for the reply, Plankton! Just ran another test and here is the text summary for it:. The highlights are mine:

 

 

GRC Port Authority Report created on UTC: 2010-01-25 at 17:02:24

Results from scan of ports: 0-1055

    0 Ports Open
    0 Ports Closed
1056 Ports Stealth
---------------------
1056 Ports Tested

ALL PORTS tested were found to be: STEALTH.

TruStealth: FAILED - ALL tested ports were STEALTH,
                   - NO unsolicited packets were received,
                   - A PING REPLY (ICMP Echo) WAS RECEIVED.

 

BTW: Located some settings under the General Rules section of the Smart Firewall options that I thought may be applicable. Both the Default Allow Specific Inbound ICMP rule and the  Default Allow Specific Inbound ICMPPV6 are unchecked and listed as read-only. Is this normal? If not, could it have something to do with the sudden change in behavior of the firewall towards pings?

 

TIA!


Hi scelli:

 

Yes, this is the default configuration.

 

I do know that the GRC site is kind of flaky at times and these tests should only be considered if there is a "gross" type of problem.

 

Again, I would not be concerned.

 

Hope that this answers your question.

Thanks again for your input, Plankton!

Hi scelli:

 

Glad to be of assistance!

 

Cheers.