Forums Connection Issues Mirc connection causes firewall warning

Every time i connect to mirc, my firewall says that it has blocked an attack attempt on my computer from a certain IP adress (always the same one).

It claims that this IP was running a portscan on my computer, and it's on different port numbers each time.

So i was wondering if this is cause for any concern or if i can just let it keep doing this. (mirc still works fine)
In other words: Does it sound like an actual intrusion attempt or something harmless?

Also, i read somewhere that some mirc servers automatically run portscans on you whenever you connect: true or false?

Thanks.

There are no "mirc servers". mIRC is just a program which lets you look at IRC in an acceptable way. If not it would look awfully ugly. A bit like how Internet Explorer lets you see web pages rather than decypher raw website code. IRC is the protocol, so there are IRC servers.

The majority of IRC servers will scan certain ports when you connect, yes. This is due to abuse, and the scanners are there to detect open proxies. If an open proxy is being used then users are automatically banned. Hurrah. If not you're fine. The best thing to do is to allow mIRC in firewalls, port scanning from servers is not a big issue, and allowing mIRC should still allow you to be notified if a user on IRC port scans you.

Regards,

I'm sorry, i meant IRC servers.

Also, thanks for the advice.
My firewall does block irc every time it does this, but apparently the scan being blocked doesn't stop the server from allowing me to connect.

You are correct, Most servers will do a port scan for insecure proxy servers. Most times they want their answers to return negative because that would mean not anyone can connect to the ports that could be hosting the proxies. In some odd cases I've run into firewalls locking things down because of it, mainly because its told to lock the system down upon a confirmed attack. Try disabling it and connecting at that point.