Just upgraded to NIS 2013. Have WinXP Home SP3 and dialup Internet. PC Flank Firewall Test (TCP Connect Scan) shows most ports Stealthed, but ports 135, 137, 138 and 139 are Closed. Is there a Knowledge Base Article or Tutorial describing how to Stealth all ports, not just for WinXP, but also for Vista and Win7 (I have all) with NIS 2013? If not, can anyone explain how to do it? I also use hi-speed Wireless at hot spots. Is the Stealth setting procedure different for Dialup vs. hi-speed options? One would think the default Firewall setting should be to stealth all ports for all types of Internet connections. That makes me think there is a bug in my NIS 2013.
Hello! Are you using a router? If you are, it's the ports of the router being scanned and reported as closed.
Also, closed ports are as secure as stealthed ports.
Hi OUgrad,
Doing a Google search of "ports 135,137, 136 and 139 PC Flank" turns up a number of reports similar to yours, independent of the brand of firewall in use. Apparently this is a quirk of PC Flank's test. Try running a test with GRC Shields Up for a second opinion.
Thank you SendOfJive. GRC Shields Up says ports 135-139 are all Stealthed. I'm using the same dialup connection as last night. Guess I'll need to start using GRC instead of PC Flank.
OUgrad
No, I'm not using a Router. It's a dialup connection.
Hi OUgrad,
You're welcome. Yeah, I checked out some of those Google returns I found and there definitely seems to be a tendency for PC Flank to erroneously report those ports as closed rather than stealthed. Good to know everything is working properly on your PC.