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I've opened my ports for BT but I'm worried about the security implications of this? My BT ports are frequently scanned, even when I'm not using BT.

What's the risk in having the ports open all the time? What's the point of having a firewall if I've got to punch big holes in it for various P2P apps?

Cheers Renners

An open port alone does not a security hole make; if it did, then you couldn't chance opening any ports for any problems. Opening your NETBIOS port would be foolhardy, but opening ports in a high port range where you'd only expect a particular server app you're familiar with to be operating is reasonably safe.

As for BitTorrent's security, it is potentially possible for there to be a DoS attack against the client (sending malformed data causing the client program to crash, for instance). A true exploit, which would allow someone to run malicious code on your computer, is highly unlikely due to Python's dynamic memory allocation. (Buffer overrun attacks don't work if you don't know where in memory the buffer is.)

thanx for the reply. I'll keep the ports open but I'll also be watching those port scans closely!

Cheers, Renners