TCP Port 119 – nntp

About TCP Port 119

Port 119 carries the IANA assignment for nntp. The IANA description reads: ‘Network News Transfer Protocol’. This port appears in 13 IDS rules and does not have notable malware activity indicators in our data.

IDS Rule References

13 IDS / security rules reference TCP port 119. 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 2): attempted-admin (12), protocol-command-decode (1).

Sample rule descriptions for TCP port 119:

• PROTOCOL-NNTP AUTHINFO USER overflow attempt
• PROTOCOL-NNTP return code buffer overflow attempt
• PROTOCOL-NNTP sendsys overflow attempt
• PROTOCOL-NNTP senduuname overflow attempt
• PROTOCOL-NNTP version overflow attempt

Data Sources

This information is compiled from: IANA Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry and Snort Community Rules (GPLv2).