Firewall and new sasser worm

[Aaron Grewell]

> 1. Why would anybody allow port 445 to be exposed on
> the internet?

Port 445 is the CIFS port, which allows file transfers and such without
the need for NetBIOS over IP encapsulation.  MS used to pretend that
this was a safe thing to do, and I don't think everybody's caught up
yet.  I've encountered this on occasion being used as though it were
just another file transfer service by those who didn't know better.

>      Could Comcast be filtering these things out? Seems
>      doubtful, since I got a notice from Comcast telling
>      its MS users to get the newest patch from MS
>      yesterday.

Comcast blocks most of the MS networking ports.  At least 135 and 139
are blocked for me.  I haven't tested 445, but it seems likely they're
blocking that one as well.