Can Online Port Scans Be Trusted?

[ed gein]

I've been running a firewall (Norton 2002/2003 and Free Kerio 2.5) for the past 3 years and never had any problems with port scans. Suddenly, about 3 months ago, I began to get reports of "closed only" ports, Later, still using the same Sygate Online Scans, I even showed "open" ports.

Now I use 4 or 5 different scanners and get pretty much 4 or 5 different sets of scan data.. some of them showing totally opposite results.

This also applies to the Free Kerio 5.1, Free ZoneAlarm, and Free Sygate firewalls, all of which have been tried out in the last 3 weeks.

I scan often with regularly updated AV and pest scanners.

I know these firewalls are plenty capable of stealthing the ports on my computer, so what can it be? Could there be something on my system that is designed to screw up any firewall that might be installed?

[stevejrc]

with sygate, unclicking "act as server" for every application (applications>advanced) stealths all ports. this is recommended on the sygate forums. worked for me.....

[ed gein]

Thanks a lot, stevejrc - I'm now getting the term "stealthed" on all online scan reports.

Btw, do you have any trouble with Smc.exe? It apparently is the Sygate engine, gui, and updater all balled into one exe. Problem is: it runs at 2 to 3 % constantly and uses anywhere from 15 to 45MB of RAM. Have you had any problems with this? Thanks.

[stevejrc]

same here, no problems - its normal.

[lewis]

Wow! And everyone complains about Zonealarm being a resource hog.

[darlin]

Wow! And everyone complains about Zonealarm being a resource hog.

Not me.

[stevejrc]

Im not bothered by its "hogness", it doesnt slow me down. You might as well take out half your RAM and sell it, if your not going to use it. lol

[darlin]

Im not bothered by its "hogness", it doesnt slow me down. You might as well take out half your RAM and sell it, if your not going to use it. lol

It's not the ram that it consumes much of, but rather systen resources (user.exe and GDI.exe).