Looks like an excellent, well rounded, layered set of protections you itemized there in post #29. I have a brand new Macbook Pro, and I’ll probably be in market for some of those tools later as well, but for now am testing the “Apple’s are impenatrable” inferrence we commonly hear and enjoying the great performance.
So before I bog this thing down with all those port trackers and blockers like I have (and actually need) on my Windows systems, since you have all that capability active, can you perhaps answer what may be causing the Mac to constantly attempt incrementing UDP port scans on the network in the 40,000 - 50,000 range?
I’m logging a few new hits through that range every minute or so on all the other systems on my network, and this is the only reference I’ve been able to find on the internet so far, but it sounds like the exact same thing I’m seeing:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1478203
As that poster said I’ve been seeing this on a new system that doesn’t have much on it, although I did load Firefox as that poster indicated as well. Thanks in advance for any ideas you may have. Little Snitch is already downloaded but I’m really wanting to keep this thing clean as long as possible. Thanks again.
You asked — “So before I bog this thing down with all those port trackers and blockers like I have (and actually need) on my Windows systems, since you have all that capability active, can you perhaps answer what may be causing the Mac to constantly attempt incrementing UDP port scans on the network in the 40,000 - 50,000 range?”
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I could have the firewall log all the UDP port accesses, too..., but I don’t do that right now. But, if I were suspicious of something, I would activate it and watch the log.
I’ve had some things that have been going on for short times and I wonder and try to run it down, just to have it stop after a short while and then I don’t know what it was.
It is a complex system and many times it is communicating “with itself” and it may look like something else is going on.
The long and short of it, is that I don’t know right off the top of my head. However, if you were to go to the Apple Support Board and go to the operating system section [I just saw that you did go there...], usually some smart people hang out there and one of them may be able to answer your question.
I’m still trying to get a list of all the normally operating processes that are supposed to be running on the Mac, and that changes a lot, too..., depending on what you have installed in the way of programs. It takes a lot of work to get to know what is going on in your system. Sometimes I think it’s better to “not know” and live life easier... LOL... (but I can’t do that...).
But, you might check “Bonjour” and see how that operates... (it’s part of the system). I think I’ve got Bonjour blocked right now, through the firewall. But, I also found that some things won’t work and I sometimes have to unblock it.
Bonjour information from Apple...
http://www.apple.com/support/bonjour/
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I also have noticed that in some places with public and free WiFi, my computer logs repeated accesses through certain ports, which is the Windows version of Bonjour, I think. At times, I’ve blocked those Windows port scans, too. It was “reported” as not dangerous, but I still didn’t want to be logged on their system.