Inbound TCP/UDP ports on xfire.

m0h1t

m0h1t

drinks like a fish
Patron
yo

I'm using ESET Smart Security 3.0.XXX
As per xfire for gaming... I'm only interested in ports for inbound connections for hosting purposes.

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other than these, I keep getting bombarded on UDP 36450 - 36465.

What ports does Xfire use?

Xfire uses TCP/IP port 25999 to connect to cs.xfire.com.

This is the only port that you HAVE to be able to communicate on in order to use Xfire. Xfire can and will attempt to use a myriad of different UDP ports, however, and they can be somewhat random.

Game servers use various ports, usually between 4000 and 60000 UDP, which is what Xfire is receiving data from when you log on. It does this to get the ping, playerlist, map and other info that is then displayed in your Xfire client for each of the game servers your friends are playing on.

If you have the Friends of Friends option enabled, all the queries from the servers they are playing on get sent out and returned on the ports those games use.

There are 3 other features in Xfire that use UDP as well.

* Typing notification - This is a randomly negotiated port above 1024 using the UDP protocol between you and the user you are typing an IM to. This can be disabled in your Tools|Options|Chat tab.
* P2P File Download system - This is a randomly negotiated port above 1024 using the UDP protocol between you and as many as 20 other users in the Xfire network. You can disable this by going to Tools|Options|Files in your Xfire client.
* Voicechat (1:1 and Group) - This is a randomly negotiated port above 1024 using the UDP protocol between you and the user or Group voice host you are voice-chatting with.
Click to expand...
Will I have to allow inbound access to xfire for all udp ports?
I don't want to open any unnecessary ports..
please advice

thnx
 
okay so did some more research.

xfire requires you to open up all UDP Ports ranging from 1024-65535.

ESET firewall also has an option of opening up ports for particular applications, does this mean these ports will be opened only when that particular application is present..?

Wont this make my system totally vulnerable to all sort of attacks such as DoS.
 
No, it won't. For a DoS to work there has to be something listening on the said UDP port and receiving a large number of packets would cause that listening service to lock up your system (or be susceptible to comprise, if it is a vulnerable service). An approximate analogy would be that say I've allowed access to port 80 through my firewall but I don't have any web-servers running on my system. If anybody tries to connect to port 80 using either TCP or UDP, nothing will happen.

In my humble experiences, the only major vulnerability that I've heard of abusing UDP was the Microsoft uPNP vulnerability which was patched long ago.

My knowledge of Windows internals is limited but I believe there are no major exploitable services listening on UDP ports on a patched Windows system.

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for bad stuff that might happen to your system by playing around with the firewall. :p
 
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