Took me 4 hours to realize my VPN was blocking my own security scans

I was trying to run a basic port scan on my home network last night to check for open ports after setting up a new router. Kept getting weird results with half the ports showing as filtered or closed when I knew they should be open. After 4 hours of messing with firewall settings and rebooting things, I finally remembered I had my VPN turned on. The VPN was routing my scan traffic through a different server and blocking my own local network. Has anyone else had a similar issue where a simple tool conflicted with their own setup like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

wells.evan2d ago

Bet you never thought about your antivirus doing the same thing - had a buddy who spent two days chasing a ghost before realizing his own AV software was silently dropping his scans.

cora_west52d ago

Wait, it was his own antivirus killing his scans? That's brutal. @wells.evan I've heard of AV software flagging legit tools, but silently dropping scans is a new level of sneaky. Happened to me once with Windows Defender. Never trust it fully again.

kai_ramirez382d ago

Is it really that big of a deal though? I get it's annoying, but most AV software has a log you can check to see exactly what it's blocking or dropping, @cora_west5. Half the time people blame their antivirus when the real problem is they didn't set up their scan rules right or they had some outdated config messing things up. Sounds more like user error than the software being sneaky to me. Windows Defender actually tells you when it quarantines something, so if it was "silently dropping" stuff, there might've been a conflict with another security tool you had running. End of the day, you're still better off with some protection than none at all, even if it trips you up once in a while.