How safe is port forwarding in general? [closed]
Say I have a few ports open for gaming.
My questions are
Can I be hacked if the attacker knows my specific external IP?
Can hacker access my router and setting by getting through these ports? If so, how likely is this to be done? How easy can this be done?
With router's security setting, does it block out the attacker even with port forwarding open?
Solution 1:
Port forwarding lets people connect to the mapped port on whatever device you've pointed it at. The security rests solely with whatever software on that device is listening on that port. So say you've port forwarded 12345 to remote desktop on a PC you never update. Odds are it will be easy to get in to that, and then to whatever it has access to (maybe the whole LAN including the "secure" side of the router). On the other hand, if you port forwarded 6789 to port 22 on a Linux box you update every night, chances are very slim anyone will be able to break-in to it. #1 doesn't make sense, your IP is technically public. But if you had no ports open, there is nowhere to connect and try and break into. Some routers may have intrusion-detection features, but they may not be able to do things like decide if remote user X is you or a hacker trying to get to the forwarded port.
Solution 2:
From your question and comments I think you're a little unclear on what's happening. I'm not sure how to teach you how to run your router, i think you need to talk to someone near you to show you these things.
Port forwarding is when your router allows outside machines to initiate connections to a machine on your network. It doesn't allow any special access to the router internals, just a connection to your inside machine.
The security issue here is not your router, but your machine. Before, it was invisible to the Internet, and therefore somewhat safe. Now the internal machine can be reached. Is your internal machine safe? Is it patched? What's on that port?
As far as your specific questions:
They always know your external IP address. Any connection you make to someone will show your external IP address. I can try to ping the entire Internet (and with a botnet, some people try) and find your external IP address. If you're connected to the Internet, the external IP is exposed. Also, this has nothing to do whether your ports are forwarded or not.
A hacker can not access you through the forwarded ports. But your router may be set up to allow configuration on a web port. How to set this up is different for each router, but make sure anything similar to "allow configuration on WAN" is disabled. Allow LAN configuration only.
This is a hard question. Most routers are just routers. They do not know what an Attacker is. They're too dumb to know "good guy" from "bad guy". Some routers also have Firewalls. They know certain bad guys, and will filter those out. But your router probably has no filters on this port. If anyone tries to connect, they're probably let in.
Also, in your comments, you ask a lot of questions. The tradition here is to take new questions out of comments and as separate questions. Please try to ask your MAC filtering questions in a new question.
Good luck. Security is very hard. Even the experts don't get it right every time.
Solution 3:
Open ports on a network are always a vulnerability of sorts, however the odds of having someone actually try to attack your network on those ports is really low. Chances are, for gaming, you're looking at like port 80 for HTTP, port 88 for UDP, and then program specific ports like 3074 for the Xbox360, or 6112 TCP for Diablo II. As I said before, an open port is always a vulnerability, but if someone actually cared enough to attack your home network the odds are there would be easier ways for them to get in than on these specific ports. If you're worried about someone getting access to your router specifically, just disable remote logins so that you have to be physically connected to login into it.
Short and simple, so long as you're only opening the specific ports games ask you to, then it's really unlikely for you to run into trouble. Just because someone knows you've got port 80 open on your router doesn't suddenly give them access to your router or your computer.