Alright, here's the setup:
Internet - Modem - WRT54G - hubs - winxp workstations & linux smb server.
Its basically a home-style distributed internet connection setup, except its at a school. What I want is remote, offsite smb access. I figured I'd need to find out which ports need forwarding and then forward them to the server on the router. I'm told in another question on SF that multiple ports will need forwarding, and it gets somewhat complicated. One of the things I need to know is which ports require forwarding for this, and what complications or vulnerabilities could arise from this. Any additional information you think I should have before doing this would be great. I'm told SMB doesn't support encryption, which is fine. Given I set up authentication/access control, all this means is that once one of my users authenticates and starts downloading data, the unencrypted traffic could be intercepted and read by a MITM, correct? Given that that's the only problem arising from lack of encryption, this is of no concern to me. I suppose that it could also mean a MITM injecting false data into the data stream, eg: user requests file A, MITM intercepts and replaces the contents of file A with some false data. This isn't really an issue either, because my users would know that something was wrong, and its not likely anyone would have incentive to do this anyway.
Another thing I've been informed of is Microsoft's poor implementation of SMB, and its crap track record for security. Does this apply if only the client-end is MS? My server is linux.