Comment Re: Chicken little (Score 1) 574
NAT is not a firewall. Lets repeat NAT is not a firewall.
User controlled functions such as UPNP make is even less of one.
NAT does prevent first time outside access, but nothing beyond that.
Look at this scenario.
You visit http://hack.ed/. It launches a flash exploit that gets admin privileges. As admin it launches a UPNP function to allow port 40,000 to your internal IP. The rest of the world now has access to your computer as if it were directly connected.
Now if your NAT also has UPNP turned off and/or also contains a firewall that prevents NEW connections to any computer behind it, yes it a NAT enabled firewall.