MikroTik security findings, explained
Every finding the audit can report has its own page: what it means, why it matters, what it looks like in Winbox, and the exact RouterOS commands that fix it. Written for people who run a MikroTik router, not only for security specialists.
Forward chain lets the internet reach your internal network
The forward chain decides which traffic may pass through the router between networks. Without a rule that drops new connections from WAN, NAT is the only thing standing between the internet and your LAN — and NAT is not a firewall.
Guest network is not isolated from the main LAN
You have a guest, hotspot or public segment on your router, but no firewall rule stops traffic from it reaching your private network. A visitor's device can browse to your NAS, printers and workstations as if it were on the LAN.
Input chain does not drop unsolicited traffic from the internet
Your router has input firewall rules, but none of them stops a new connection arriving from the WAN side. RouterOS then accepts it by default, so every enabled service is still reachable from the internet.
No brute-force protection for internet-facing management
A management service on your router answers to the whole internet and nothing limits repeated login attempts. Scanners will guess passwords around the clock. The real fix is to stop exposing management; a staged address-list firewall is the safety net.
No firewall rules on the input chain: your router accepts every connection
The input chain is the firewall that protects the router itself. When it is empty, every service on the device — Winbox, SSH, the API, DNS — is open to whoever can reach the WAN port. This is the single most serious finding the audit can report.
No rule dropping invalid connections
Your input chain has no rule that drops packets in the invalid connection state. These packets belong to no known connection and are used by scanners and firewall-evasion tools. One line fixes it.
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