Does port forwarding leave my computer vulnerable to hacking?

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Elliah

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utorrent and some games make use of portforwarding and i'd like to know if that would leave my computer vulnerable to attacks...
 
yes and no.
yes in that data on that port from ANY source goes directly to your system.
no in that your firewall can still filter which sources are actually allowed.
also no in that if your software is not running, then the inbound traffic arrives at
your system but goes nowhere (ie just gets dropped).

so the real issue will be 'how good is the software you are using on that port?'

I suggest, no one can really tell ;)
 
As a follow up question, is it worth changing the default port that a software program uses to increase security? I use a popular remote login program and it has a default port that is used to get into my network at home. I have never changed the port thyat is used by default and am wondering if doing so would make it less likely that a hacker could find and use such a port?
 
excellent idea :) be sure it's above 1024 and less than 65535.

hint; for a private web server instead of the default 80, I use 10080
 
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