port 445 ?

[Paul Schmehl]

--On Sunday, January 23, 2005 7:01 AM -0800 faisal gillani 
<fasi_74 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> i use samba on my freebsd server to share files , i
> dont use any active directory connectivity still the
> port "445/tcp    open        microsoft-ds" is open , i
> read is some where that this port should be close as
> it is dangerous to the server , is this true ?
>
Port 445 is the CIFS port, which is used by the newer MS systems 
(2000,XP,2003) for networking.  Like any networking port, it should not be 
exposed to the Internet.  The port itself doesn't represent a risk, but 
there's no reason to make it available to the internet anyway.

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
The University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu