TCP Port 8118 – privoxy
About TCP Port 8118
Port 8118 is registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for privoxy. The IANA description reads: ‘Privoxy HTTP proxy’. This port is referenced in 2036 IDS rules and exhibits moderate malware activity in monitored traffic.
IDS Rule References
2036 IDS / security rules reference TCP port 8118. Treat that number as context, not a danger score. Many detection rules are written against groups of ports rather than one service, web ports especially, so common web alternate ports inherit large counts while genuinely sensitive services can show few rules or none. Presence in IDS rules does not mean traffic on this port is malicious.
Rule categories (top 6): trojan-activity (727), web-application-activity (476), web-application-attack (344), attempted-recon (270), misc-activity (76), attempted-user (58).
Sample rule descriptions for TCP port 8118:
- SERVER-WEBAPP PCCS mysql database admin tool access
- SERVER-WEBAPP HyperSeek hsx.cgi directory traversal attempt
- SERVER-WEBAPP SWSoft ASPSeek Overflow attempt
- SERVER-WEBAPP Progress webspeed access
- SERVER-WEBAPP yabb directory traversal attempt
Malware Rule References
A meaningful share of the IDS rules that reference this port are malware related.
679 of the 2036 IDS rules that reference TCP port 8118 are malware related. That describes detection coverage across the whole internet, not anything about your machine or your network.
Families observed (top 8): Bancos (20), Fareit (15), Zeus (15), DesertFalcon (11), Symmi (11), Zebrocy (11), Chopper (10), Locky (9), and 261 more families.
Data Sources
This information is compiled from: IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry, Emerging Threats Open Ruleset (BSD 2-Clause / GPLv2 per SID range), Snort Community Rules (GPLv2), and MITRE ATT&CK (Apache 2.0).