bittoorrent - another strange question.

[Pedro Fernandes Macedo]

akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:

>I have a tangential Bittorrent question. Why would a installation like
>ours who have taken great trouble to beef up security with a tight
>firewall suddenly open ports 6881-6889 through the firewall? We are
>not interested in serve other people with software so what is the
>purpose of using Bittorrent?
>  
>

Openning the ports doesnt create a major security hole (IMHO) , as long 
as you can control every single application that uses those ports... If 
you're gonna open the ports for everyone to use, then I suggest to not 
do it.. Being a ex-sysadmin , I'd say: "never" to openning those 
ports... any person inside your domain can notice that the ports are 
open and will be able to open any kind of server , which is then your 
security hole. (and I know that this will happen... people like to abuse 
fast connections....)
But if you're openning the ports for a single person , then it's not a 
big deal , as long as you know for sure what app is using that port... 
So far , I havent heard about any bittorrent exploit , so it's safe for 
now...

Btw , you dont need to open all those ports... You can tell the 
interested parties to use the newer clients. Most of them (for windows, 
all of them. For linux , i know azureus and maybe the original 
bittorrent client) currently use just one port...

--
Pedro Macedo