Risks of allowing programs through a firewall

When you add a program to the list of allowed programs in a firewall, or when you open a firewall port, you allow a particular program to send information to or from your computer through the firewall. Allowing a program to communicate through a firewall (sometimes called unblocking) is like punching a hole in the firewall.

Each time you open a port or allow a program to communicate through a firewall, your computer becomes a bit less secure. The more allowed programs or open ports your firewall has, the more opportunities there are for hackers or malicious software to use one of those openings to spread a worm, access your files, or use your computer to spread malicious software to others.

It's generally safer to add a program to the list of allowed programs than to open a port. If you open a port, it stays open until you close it, whether or not a program is using it. If you add a program to the list of allowed programs, the "hole" is open only when needed for a particular communication.


To help decrease your security risk:

1. Only allow a program or open a port when you really need to, and remove programs from the list of allowed programs or close ports that you no longer need.

2. Never allow a program that you don't recognize to communicate through the firewall.

Firewall

A firewall is software or hardware that checks information coming from the Internet or a network, and then either blocks it or allows it to pass through to your computer, depending on your firewall settings.

A firewall can help prevent hackers or malicious software (such as worms) from gaining access to your computer through a network or the Internet. A firewall can also help stop your computer from sending malicious software to other computers.

View and edit advanced firewall options

• You must be logged on as an administrator to perform these steps.
• Windows Firewall with Advanced Security is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that provides more advanced options for IT professionals. With this firewall, you can set up and view detailed inbound and outbound rules and integrate with Internet Protocol security (IPsec).

Follow these steps to open Windows Firewall with Advanced Security:

• Click to open Windows Firewall.
• In the left pane, click advanced settings. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
• Note: You must be a member of the Administrators group or the Network Operators group to use Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

Un-Blocking Torrents

Most system administrators use below techniques to block Bit Torrent on the network.

1. Disable installation of torrents clients like µTorrents on your system. The assumption is that without a torrent client a user will not be able to download a torrent file.

2. Block the download of any file that has a .torrent file extension. All torrent meta files have a .torrent extension. If a user is not able to download the torrent meta file, then it will not know the location of the target file and hence it will not be able to successfully download it.

3. Blocking the ports used by torrent clients like µTorrent.

Let us know how easy to bypass these commonly used blocking mechanism.
If your administrator does not allow you to install torrent clients on your system, then it is still possible for you to download torrents with the help of web based torrent clients which allow you to download the torrent file straight from your browser!

Web based Torrent Client
Open your browser and type www.bitlet.org in the address bar and open the website.
Type the torrent URL that you want to download inside of the www.bitlet.org webpage and download your torrent without any hassles.