What is meant by a hidden socket?

[Richier308]

I'm sorry if this question has been answered before, but I'm not sure what is meant by a port or socket being hidden. I know a little bit about Winsock programming, but I don't recall ever seeing anything that made a socket "hidden."

Please enlighten me...

Thank you very much
Rich S.

[Pilli]

Any program such as a Trojan could open a socket that you would not know about if it was working in the backround.
If you have a program such as CryptoSuite and you have i'ts GUI open the connection will show as Black, if you now iconise that GUI to the sys tray for instance PE will show that connection in Red as it is now hidden.

HTH Pilli.