Port Scans and DOS on logs of my Netgear router, should i be worried.

Hey all, lately ive become a bit obsessed with being secure, i guess were all like that.

Recently ive been getting the netgear logs showing PORT SCAN and DOS next to a few IPs on my router, so i immediately turn off all ports open, and disable UPNP, the router is firewalled and the option to not respond to pings is active,

What i really want to know is, are these messages dangerous?

Thanks all,

Catacylsm.

 

I am likely in the minority on this, but no. This is the nature of the Internet these days.

You've realistically taken all the precautions you can personally take. You situation is basically akin to having a cat burglar knocking on your door, you not answering it, him trying the door, the door being locked, and him going next door.

Is it comforting to know a cat burglar wanted in? No. But you have taken steps to keep him out and that's about all you can do.

If you want to notify your ISP, they may try to trace it back to its origin, but most of the time they won't.

 

Hehe, thanks for the reply gerry, it does indeed make sense.

And AOL surely wont help out here, so i shall, "Leave the burglar bored for a week"

Thanks again.

 

If you have any security programs installed, or if AOL has something you're using for security, they routinely do port scans to test your system/network integrity, and many people make the mistake that it's a bot or hack attempt at trying to breach the system when they see the scans in the logs. You can also do it by running a diagnostic on your system, or if you have a program installed that routinely runs a diagnostic on your network. I've seen this many times in the past, and it's nothing to be concerned with. It's just the testing scans that you're seeing.

Closing your Ports and disabling UPnP can cause you problems though, as you need to have certain ports available for different programs and access to the 'net. This is especially the case for any online gaming.