Which Services do I really need?

[Daninku]

I have scanned my system with Baseline Security Analyzer, and it told me that I have some potentially unnecessary services are installed. These are the results:

FTP Publishing: Running
SMTP: Running
Telnet: Stopped
WWW Publishing: Running


It is telling me that this list of services should only be enabled on computers that require their functionality. Services that are not required should be disabled to reduce the attack surface of the system.

So... which ones do I really need running on my PC?? And if there's unnecessary services running, how can I stop them?

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

[Cactus]

Hey Daninku ...
Below are the services that you mention running.
Each is explained,you decide whether you need the service or not.
The SMTP service is needed.

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FTP Publishing Service—provides (file transfer protocol) FTP connectivity and administration through the Internet Information Service (IIS) snap-in. Features include bandwidth throttling, security accounts, and extensible logging.

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Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)—transports e-mail across the network.

The SMTP service is used as an e-mail submission and relay agent. It can accept and queue e-mail for remote destinations and retry at specified intervals. Windows domain controllers use the SMTP service for intersite e-mail-based replication. The Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) for Windows 2000 COM component can use the SMTP Service to submit and queue outbound e-mail.

Other applications may use the SMTP Service as the basis for the SMTP support in their product, for example, Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server.

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World Wide Web Publishing Service—provides HTTP services for applications on the Windows platform. The service depends on the IIS administration service and kernel TCP/IP support. If this service is turned off the operating system will no longer be able to serve act as a Web server.


Cactus

[liljim]

Check out

[Daninku]

Thanks both, I think I will gonna leave them as they are