This is quite odd... Either way, I'd keep a firewall running. Furthermore, I'd get something better than Norton...Kaspersky is one of the best, and their internet security suite has a half decent firewall built in. For me, it catches attacks on my SQL daily.
...Huh. So I had pretty much resigned myself to having my computer locked down for an indefinite period of time. After rebooting because SMOD Tactical locked up while loading, I decided to run Netstat for shits and giggles. I saw this: Christ. Is it possible that all this time, the multitude of connections that open up have just been for Steam? If so, this would probably indicate that I don't have a virus or trojan or worm, and that I was freaking out over nothing. What do you think the chances of this are?
Well, nothing should be showing up on PID 0, it's the System Idle Process! The connection is described as waiting, though, so it's possible that it's what it shows up under when the connection isn't doing anything. Well, either way, I shut down Steam, opened netstat, and restarted Steam, and I'm getting all those connections to open every time I start it up. I don't think I ever had a worm/virus/trojan/anything, and that my brother's firewall was just freaking out. Heh. So several years of no antivirus, no firewall, and all my ports wide open, and I never picked up anything? Wewt!
I had my computer set as the default DMZ server, which means that all my ports were forwarded. It made setting up game servers so much easier. ...Except for Gldsrc and Source games. For some reason, I can't host servers with my Steam account for Gldsrc and Source. Everything else on Steam is fine, all other games are fine... So bizarre. If I log on as my brother, they work. Something is wonky with my Steam account, and I really need to get around to asking Valve for help sometime. Anyway, my router itself has this to say about the DMZ server setting:
You could check the the support wiki: http://supportwiki.steampowered.com/wiki/Main_Page I'm not sure if you can acces it though, it might not be open to the public yet.
