how secure is my network and PCs?

Question

I have 2 PC's 1 connected by wire and other wirelessly connected to a netgear router. I have done the usual stuff like stopped broadcasting SSID, enabled WEP (this is a pre-WPA router) and changed the IP addresses from the default (192.168.whatever) to something else.

I have 2 ports forwarded for bittorrent purposes but otherwise nothing else.

I don't have a s/w firewall installed (I do have AVIRA antivirus on both PC's) because I have been told that
a) a router is a h/w firewall
b) Sygate/zonealarm etc get in the way of bit torrents.

Do I have a cause for concern?

I do have plans to upgrade my router to get a WPA enabled one.

Thanks

Thanks- I am pretty sure about what I download, they are mostly videos of Indian movies or tennis matches and I have watched them all.

But since you seem to be fairly well versed on this subject let me ask you a related thing. How do programs like Joost which depend on peer-to-peer sharing of some sort to allow you watch TV work when I am behind a firewall?

Answer 1

A router is not in itself a firewall. True, you can make a router act as a firewall if it supports that kind of filtering, but c'mon, it doesn't support WPA, what kind of a firewall do you expect it has? It's still better than having your PC directly exposed to the Internet, I give you that, but not by as much of a measure as you would hope.

I would recommend a software firewall like zonealarm. Yes, they CAN get in the way of bittorrents... but, to be completely blunt, if they're misconfigured they'll get in the way of surfing the web and checking your email too. The last time I used zonealarm, it was really noisy and obnoxious for a day, asking me if I wanted to allow pretty much any program I was using. If you tell zone alarm to allow the bit torrent traffic, however, it'll let it through just fine. (It's this level of customization I really doubt your router has; if it's allowing you to use bit torrent, it's allowing a LOT of stuff through.)

Another argument for a software firewall on the PCs is the WEP encryption.... or, basically, no real encryption if anyone has half a passing interest in your network. Mind you, I'm not going to tell you to run out and get a WPA router right away, but you should definitely *not* assume that people can't get directly to your PCs. Even if they couldn't get around the router, they could park outside your house.

If you do any/much file transferring or transmitting any other sensitive data between your PCs, you may want to consider setting up IPSEC security between them; Windows XP has built in support for it (assuming you're at least not using anything older than XP....)

Long story short; until you do upgrade your router to one that supports firewalling and WPA (or EAP or other wireless security protocols), just operate as if each PC was directly exposed. Put a software firewall on them, and you should be relatively OK... still somewhat better off than being directly on the Internet. When you get the new router, you will still have SOME worry since there is no such thing as a perfectly secure wireless link, but it would be, as they say, good enough for government work at that point. :)

Answer 2

Well, bittorrents force open ports in order to work, that presents a "security" issue. Not a major one but one that wouldn't be open otherwise. Yes, routers are h/w firewalls, in that the prevent un-requested internet packets from getting back to your computer but you are requesting torrents!

So put a firewall on the machine that only lets your torrents return packets to the correct ports otherwise you are open to attack. If you really want to run secure dump the torrents!
Besides, do you really know what is in those files you are downloading? (I doubt it.)