How safe while tethering from my phone?

[r4sh1d]

Sometimes I hookup my zenfone 2 running lolipop to my PC through USB, and then an Ethernet to my router (dlink DIR-862L running dd-wrt) to tether data to my other devices while my internet is down, how safe is my PC in this case not being behind a router with built in firewall? windows 10 pro & just the windows firewall running.

 

[corkyg]

A lot of that depends on the level of protection you have assigned to your phone as an Internet link. I frequently use my phone as a hotspot with WPA-2 security and a strong password. While that can be wireless, I often connect it with a short USB cable as a means of maintaining phone battery power. I have never had a security problem that way.

 

[r4sh1d]

I'm just wondering would an android phone running lollipop is as safe as a standalone router? having my pc hooked up directly to my phone and not to a router would cause it to be an easy target?

I understand my router is not 100% safe and stuff, but should I change my setup?

 

[John Connor]

I don't know for sure, but I'm willing to bet that it's not as bad as a regular ISP connected network. The Windows firewall should be enough. But I have to tell you, I had the Windows firewall on and had peerblock running and I was getting a load of blocks which didn't make since to me. I mean, I block Amazon AWS, China, Russia, Microsoft Azure, TOR and some other things. So I was thinking a recent program was doing this. After combing through my entire computer without finding anything out of the ordinary I wondered of I was still in the DMZ I had placed my computer in. So I logged into my router flashed with DD-WRT and DMZ was off, but I guess you have to hit apply and then save. I did that and no more peerblock blocks.

So with that, Try peerblock and grab some lists from iblock list and see what happens. I maintain some lists for Amazon, CloudFlare and Azure at my blog. www.blog.systechforum.net If you want, I can give you my massive country blocks. I'll have to update them. It's not a problem. Like I said, I block China and Russia. Taiwan is in there the DPRK, Cuba, Iran, Ukraine I think and several others.

Tinywall might be better than Windows firewall. https://tinywall.pados.hu/features.php

 

[r4sh1d]

Thanks alot for all the info & the link; I'll look into it.

It's not that I have had any issues with my setup, it just made me wonder how secure it really is; I always thought that having a router with built in firewall running would be the way to go I guess.

 

[John Connor]

I always thought that having a router with built in firewall running would be the way to go I guess.

It is because a router has SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) so it will block any inbouds you don't allow unless you already established a connection. But in your case you are using a computer to tether and the computer is the main input point of connection, not the router.