How secure is my setup?

[Robbo]

I know the cow is out of the barn on this, but I have a question about how secure my computer is when I am hosting fantasy grounds.

My setup is as follows: running an ultimate license on my iMac using crossover with an airport router that goes through my DSL router.

I have been playing 4E for over a year now with a fantastic group of players I met through a video game message board. What I would like to do now is share the love a little bit and run a few games for other people on the same message board so that they can get a look at what fantasy grounds has to offer.

My concern is that nearly everyone on the message board is more tech savvy than I am. My guess is that 5 or 6 new people would be interested in playing in a session, but I really have no idea who these people are. If by some horrible bad luck one of these people wanted to hurt my computer, would it be easy for them to do so?

Of course, with my current group I took the same chance, and I have had nothing but the most positive experience. I am fairly certain I will have the same results with a new group of people, but I thought I would turn to the people on this board and ask the question.

Thanks for your time!

[Trenloe]

As long as you don't turn off your DSL router firewall and just use port forwarding to forward port 1802 to your iMac then there is virtually nothing that anyone could do to your computer. Fantasy Grounds listens for network traffic on port 1802 - the other processes on your computer use different port numbers to communicate; so only forwarding port 1802 restricts access from the internet to only Fantasy Grounds.

The worst someone could do was bombard port 1802 with a lot of traffic and stop FG from running properly.

[dr_venture]

How about with Hamachi running, where we're all on the same VPN? My players are currently all good friends, but I am thinking of playing with more folks soon. Even if the players themselves are innocent, how about viruses that sperad themselves over networks?

[Trenloe]

How about with Hamachi running, where we're all on the same VPN? My players are currently all good friends, but I am thinking of playing with more folks soon. Even if the players themselves are innocent, how about viruses that sperad themselves over networks?

Hi dr_v,

Have a quick check of the Security section of the Wikipedia page for Hamachi here. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi_%28software%29)

The concerns are the 2nd and last items on the list. The main one is that using Hamachi gives other users on the same VPN tunnel "LAN like access" to your computer. I'm not familiar with Mac based O/S security, but on a Windows computer (especially Vista or Windows 7) run Windows firewall, an anti-virus program (Microsoft Security Essentials or another 3rd party product), disable file sharing (perhaps categorise the Hamachi VPN as a "public network" as this will disable a lot of sharing automatically - however, you will have to allow Windows Firewall to run Fantasy Grounds over the Public Network).

So, essentially, you have to be a lot more careful running FG over Hamachi - but, with the right level of security, you "should" be OK. As always. be careful and if you're not sure what others on the VPN are sharing/requesting don't open files from other computers or allow others access to your files. If you're not sure, at the end of your session, run a complete scan of your system using an up-to-date virus scanner.

[dr_venture]

Thanks Tren!