Is the firewall in the Vodafone router secure?

[Janne]

Hello all

I have a pretty serious security problem with my Vodafone router that I just found out. I have a few stereo's connected to my local LAN (combination of wired and WiFi), one networked receiver (Yamaha) and one using Apple's Airplay.

The other day, my son, who has an Android phone, discovered that he has access to the Yamaha receiver from outside our LAN/Firewall (he was at work and had access to it). As I didn't believe him, when we were home, he turned off WiFi from his phone, he confirmed that his 4G started, and then he turned on our receiver and started playing music, change volume etc. from his phone!

The Firewall is turned on (I don't even allow ping to go through), Port mapping and "exposed host function" are both turned off.

Any ideas how this could happen? If not, I probably need to contact Vodafone? Let me know what you think

Thanks in advance

[hrym]

Is the Yamaha receiver designed to do this?   I'm by no means an expert, but I do know that there are networked hard drives that can be accessed remotely, specifically so that you can access local content remotely.   You don't specify the process, but is it possible that your son has access (through an app, say) that wouldn't be available to anyone not registered with the device?   If the rest of the network is obscured, the issue would appeear to be device-specific, hence the suggestion.

[sat505]

Have you got UPNP enabled? That will allow ports to open without you configuring them.

[Janne]

Hi

I can't even access any settings for UPnP, but even if it's activated, I would have thought that it only allows visibility for other devices on the LAN, not for anyone outside the firewall?

My main concern is that I have closed all ports on the firewall, and yet, my son gets access to a device on my LAN from the outside using an Android phone and Spotify. It cannot be right. Do you agree?

[Janne]

Thanks for this! In opposite to Apple's Airplay, the Yamaha networked receiver doesn't have a password for the device itself on the LAN, so the only protection I can give it is the Firewall, and as I mentioned, the firewall has all ports blocked - at least in the settings...

So I don't expect any traffic at all from outside the firewall to my LAN, and if anyone has access, I would really need to control it

The App my son used was Spotify

//Jan

[sat505 · Accepted solution]

UPNP will allow your Yamaha to setup port mapping on the router to allow external access from the internet. It can be found in 'expert mode' in 'settings' then 'configuration'.

It's worth checking as you are correct the firewall should block external access.

[Janne]

I may have clicked the "Problem solved"-button a bit too early, but it was great that you helped me find the UPnP setting, thanks for that.

But unfortuinately, the problem remains. I turned off UPnP, but can still get access to the Yamaha receiver from outside the firewall. And I guess that now it'll be more difficult to find printers and servers etc INSIDE the Firewall, on my LAN, as I now have switched off the UPnP?, 

Thoughts?

[sat505]

UPNP won't affect much if anything if you have a fairly standard setup. I've turned it off for years with no adverse affects (for security reasons mainly - I like to configure my own ports and not allow some app or trojan to do it on my behalf).

I'm guessing but it might take a while to remove the port mappings. Try a reboot of the router and see if that clears it.

[Janne]

I'll try that - thanks!

[Chapelle1]

Hi I have an issue connecting my networked Marantz recvier to the vodsafone router.   The vodafone router picks up the IP adress of the Marantz recvier but it fails to connect when I go throiugh the onscreen set up for the Marantz device. Any idea why it failts ot connect.  I had not such issues with my previous router which was Belkin.