Strange Entries Repeated in Router Log

[jasarien]

Hey guys,

I've noticed recently that my router is being bombarded with connection attempts to my external IP on port 10001. It's a bit disconcerting, each connection attempt coming a few seconds after the other.
The IPs performing the connections seem to be completely random each time, but whenever I perform a whois query on them they're either in China, Thailand or Japan. I'm not sure what the policies of posting IP addresses in this forum are, so I'll refrain at the moment, but my log is completely inundated with these connection attempts.
I do have some piece of mind in that the firewall is denying all these connections to the UDP port 10001.

Also, I don't have any services running on port 10001 (I previously had Webmin and Usermin installed on my linux server, but removed them and closed the ports after seeing these entries).

Is there anything I can do to stop these attempts? I'm pretty sure I'm safe behind my firewall, but I just can't help donning my tinfoil hat.

 

[Makosuke]

I can't say I've seen that particular behavior (usually portscans for me), but it's pretty common to see repeated connection attempts on just about any internet-exposed computer--probably compromised systems hammering away at random IP addresses trying to find an open port or some vulnerable service.

Of course if it's a router and you're not forwarding that port, it shouldn't matter in the least. Nothing you can do to stop it, anyway.

 

[jasarien]

It won't affect my bandwidth usage, or the speed at which I download / upload?
Those are my main concerns I guess.

 

[Makosuke]

Almost certainly not. If you were being really hammered with outside connections, it could theoretically act as a sort of DoS attack, but that would be on the order of hundreds of attempts per second, and I've never heard of that happening to a home user.