MacOS – How to find culprit blocking TCP ports 80, 443, and 5223 on macOS

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These ports, crucial to iMessage and Facetime, are blocked: TCP Ports 80, 443, and 5223 on macOS Sierra 10.12.2 (MacBookPro11,3). (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202078)

In Network Utility, I perform a scan and the only Open Port is 631.

When I run:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80

I get a few calls then it reads that:

socket.error: [Errno 13] Permission denied

A few other terminal commands return similar responses.

Is there a method I can use to find the culprit that is blocking these ports (and likely others) on OSX? These ports specifically are needed for iMessage and Facetime.

I do not have Sophos or any other Firewall (that I know of).

Best Answer

There are two things you confuse:

  • FaceTime and iMessage require communication on ports specified in the article for outbound connections.

  • Your "Permission denied" message is related to opening the port 80 for inbound connections. It's not because of any process blocking it, but if you want to make a process listen on a port less than 1024, you need to use root, so:

    sudo python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80