Help! Why are ports 23 & 80 open?

asanam

Registered
I'm running Leopard, the apple firewall is on and I also have Little Snitch installed which is a network monitor. I recently went to grc.com to scan ports with SheildsUP! and the result is all stealth except port 80 http and port 23 telnet which are open. I tried another online security scanner and it came up with the same result. I'm completely at a loss as to why these ports are open, I'm not a technically savvy user when it comes to UNIX and the command line. I do not even know how to turn telnet on! I'm not on a network and I have no sharing services enabled. A friend of mine who also has a Mac did the grc scan and his machine came up with total stealth. Anyone have any ideas on this?
 
Are you behind a router like the Linksys models which have a web interface? If so, then that's probably why those two ports are open. Some routers also have telnet capabilities, but that is a major security risk which is why SSH has supplanted telnet. If you can, disable telnet on the router and port 23 should show as stealth.

If you only have the router given to you by the ISP, then there's probably nothing you can do about that. But if it's your own purchased router, then access the web interface (as per the instructions for your router) and disable telnet from there.
 
Thank you, you were right, it was the router. It's a Draytek 2600 I'm using, I couldn't work out how to disable ports in the web interface but I went the whole nine yards and reset the router and reconfigured my connection. Went back to grc.com to do the scan and the result was all stealth. Thanks again!
 
Thank you, you were right, it was the router. It's a Draytek 2600 I'm using, I couldn't work out how to disable ports in the web interface but I went the whole nine yards and reset the router and reconfigured my connection. Went back to grc.com to do the scan and the result was all stealth. Thanks again!

Awesome. Glad you got it worked out. :)
 
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