Hi, i´m looking for players by tcp-ip

Wouldn't TCPIP games make PCs vulnerable?

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A direct IP to IP connection to another computer could (intentionally or unintentionally) leave a PC vulnerable to malicious software.

No it couldn't. No malware in existence is written to try to piggy-back through a SE5 TCP/IP game connection. Even if SE5's net code were to have some random security hole in it, it is such a low profile target for an attack vector that noone would bother writing malware to exploit it.

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So, once the tcp/ip connection is made the SE5 software would keep out anything not explicitly using the connection?

All that a TCP/IP connection is is a series of packets sent from one application to another. At worst, a bot could try to glean all destination IP addresses from incoming and outgoing packets, which isn't all that useful.

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Sorry if I sound paranoid but I'm a networking engineer in the real world. (TCP is the layer 4 protocol that sets up the virtual circuit end-to-end, IP is the layer 3 protocol that handles the packets) When it comes to data security I'm not very trusting of peer-to-peer connections with someone else's PC or server. I've used data analyzers before but its the malicious software I worry about. Much of it is very sopisticated and difficult to detect.

So many games over the years have had the ability to connect directly via TCP/IP. Even the ones that dont connect in this way are still using a specified port to connect to a server somewhere, normally this port must be opened to allow the traffic.
Its possible that if you connected to someone you didnt know they could have a prog that might gain entry to your computer using the tcp/ip connection, but thats a paranoid way of thinking
If you worry so much about security, get rid of windows and move to Linux, although I cant say from experience, but I have come very close to getting rid of windows and moving to Linux.

Which would be about everyone...
(Show of hands, how many of you know me?)

dan3260 wrote:

they could have a prog that might gain entry to your computer using the tcp/ip connection, but thats a paranoid way of thinking

Exactly...

With Linux, like Mac, security is just an illusion. If more people would use either then hackers would find it more worth their time.

Yes you are probably correct, however there is a difference in the way programs are run in Linux and Windows, which is supposed to make Linux more secure, but I cant remember why that is
I read a lot about it when I was thinking of changing OSs to Linux, but it was a while ago. I kept windows xp purely for the gaming benefits.

TCP/IP connections are everywhere. Your web browser uses a TCP/IP connection. Your instant messaging client uses a TCP/IP connection. Your e-mail program probably uses a TCP/IP connection. Most networked games use UDP, but that's techically even *less* secure than TCP/IP.

Malicious software must be customized to exploit vulnerabilities in specific programs. In other words, it must be targeted at something very specific: for example, a hacker might write an exploit which targets a specific version of Internet Explorer.

As another posted already mentioned, the probability that someone would even bother to write an exploit for Space Empires 5 is almost zero. There's no point. A hacker could spend hours searching the Internet without finding a single computer running SE5, much less accepting TCP/IP connections.

Furthermore, an exploit might not even be possible. If Aaron has done a good job writing the SE5 network code then there's no way for a hacker to break in. There must be a pre-existing bug in the application, specifically related to how network data is transfered, in order for a hacker to do something malicious.

It is much, much more likely that you will catch a virus from clicking a random link in your web browser than from SE5. Browsers are popular targets among hackers, and zero-day exploits* are not uncommon.

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* Zero-day exploits are malicious bug exploits which appear in the wild (on the Internet) before a bug fix is available from the program's manufacturer.

Some malicious software can scan for and use any open TCP/UDP ports. UDP is best used on single hops (such as from you to your ISP), using it as an end-to-end virtual circuit substitute for TCP is very unreliable. I've read that giving out an IP address can be as dangerous as giving out your social security number. Many things can be done with an IP address, even without (initially at least) knowing what TCP ports may be open.

A knowledgable owner of firewall software (such as Norton 360 or Internet Security) is ahead of the game but nothing is foolproof. Years ago I had software monitoring my Internet usage and noticed I was being probed from the outside at least a dozen times an hour from sources all over the world. There was one probe I even isolated down to a particular room in a particular dorm in the University of Taipei (I sent them an email asking them to check into it ).

Hehe, did you ever get a reply?
Chances are though you must have been tagged in someway by this person, by downloading a malicious piece of software that would identify your location to the hacker.
I just googled this, and with current technology, there is a maximum of 4,294,967,296 IP addresses, so it would take someone 1361 years to contact every IP address using one pc taking 10 seconds per try.
In a few years, newer technology will increase the number of IP addresses to 2^128, which would take someone 107828975245563180806960797852740 years to check them all:) That number is so big i dont know what it is

IPv6 will transform the internet.

BTW, I received no reply from Taipei. I thought giving them a building and room number would make it easy. I think that was about two PCs ago for me.

i have played using Hamachi with no problems , let me know if you want to try.

ICQ 27609820 or
email:

XP has a built in firewall, Vista has a built in firewall, Linux is easy to add a firewall to (if the distro doesn't come with AppArmor or SELinux already), Mac OSX probably has trivial to install firewalls too... Random port pinging is only useful against ancient OSes.

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Not really. I've learned to assume nothing about what other people may know or not know...

This, plus firewall software blocking unused ports, should take care of most concerns but nothing is ever 100%, is it? Those who find the possible threat as completely inane may be the most at risk.