As you do when supposed to be doing something that's incredibly tedious (I'm supposed to be writing my final assignment for my OU course and was actually looking for info on bastion servers), I ended up following a link (like you do) and ended up on the
ShieldsUp! site. I am pleased to report that my computer officially doesn't exist (though whisper it very quietly because I'm sure Diva would be upset if she thought she didn't exist). The site basically sends packets to your computer and pings various ports in an effort to establish which ports are open, and therefore which ports could potentially leave you vulnerable to attack from those naughty little hax0rs...
File sharing:
Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist!
One or more ports on this system are operating in FULL STEALTH MODE! Standard Internet behavior requires port connection attempts to be answered with a success or refusal response. Therefore, only an attempt to connect to a nonexistent computer results in no response of either kind. But YOUR computer has DELIBERATELY CHOSEN NOT TO RESPOND (that's very cool!) which represents advanced computer and port stealthing capabilities. A machine configured in this fashion is well hardened to Internet NetBIOS attack and intrusion.
Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer.
All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet.
Common ports:
Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.
There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or even any computer) exists at this IP address!
Nice to know that my firewall (ZoneAlarm) appears to be doing what it should do.
