WinXP SP2 firewall

I do use WinXP SP2 firewall which I've read in many places that's not good enough. Unfortunately, I do not understand whether it is up to the work or not so I'd like to read your comments.

I use the computers (2 not fisically connected between them -- office and home) for office work, Internet, ... and got one dsl and one dial-up.

I tried Zone Alarm Prop (trial) and Kerio, the latest one seemed to me that used less resources and, somehow, better runner but harder to figure out how to set it up.

To end with this post, I must stay with WinXP SP2 firewall or I must migrate to something else?

Reply to
acmac
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No you don't have to migrate. The XP FW is just as good as the rest of the crap that's out there. However, you can supplement the XP FW since it cannot stop outbound traffic. I use IPsec to supplement the personal FW I use as it will supplement any PFW solution to further protect the machine that has a direct connection to the Internet (no device such as a router between the modem and the computer).

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I implemeted the Analogx rules for IPsec, which IPsec can stop inbound and outbound traffic by port, protocol or IP behind the XP FW. You look at the Analogx rules to learn how to make the rules a piece of cake.

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And where you must go and try to implement some of it is below.

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Duane :)

Reply to
Duane Arnold

Why should it not be good enough? I never read anything substantial. There really is no reason to think so.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

MS mananges only the inbound connections, and not very well at that. A *real* Firewall has control of deny/allow ip address or address range inbound/outbound directions protocols tcp/upd or both one or more ports

it (MS) is better than nothing, but if there's an infection, it will not assist you in containing it to only the infected machine.

Reply to
Jeff B

Yes, and this is OK.

The next unfounded claim. What exactly is your critics on that topic in _technical_ _detail_, please?

Oh-my-FSM. A "real" Firewall. What I'm doing here, discussion on this niveau?

Yes. And _any_ "Personal Firewall" will not manage to do this, too.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

once again, the controls of a *real* Firewall are: deny/allow ip address or address range (both source and dest) inbound/outbound directions protocols tcp/upd or both one or more ports

Reply to
Jeff B

"acmac" wrote in news:dnkvu8$1a4$ snipped-for-privacy@nsnmrro2-gest.nuria.telefonica-data.net:

Only idiots use personal software firewalls. Get a NAT router with SPI. See this, from

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"Personal Firewalls" are mostly snake-oil

A 'personal firewall' isn't a firewall. A firewall is a dedicated box with (usually) two or three ethernet ports running no services other than a firewall. My preferred configuration is an x86 box with a couple of tulip cards running FreeBSD or OpenBSD and ipf, though you can do OK with Linux and iptables too. You can run either on a $100 obsolete PC. (*BSD is better, but Linux is easier for a new user to configure).

Even the little hardware NAT boxes that you can get for sharing a DSL connection or cable modem are way better than any 'software firewall' (The NetGear RT311 and RT314 are extremely sophisticated and flexible NATs and start at less than $100 - they do full NATing, allow port forwarding and filtering to a protected network (NetGear Firewalls and NATs).

So... what does a 'personal firewall' actually do? Well, effectively it listens on all the ports on your system. This provides no real additional security over turning off the services that you don't use.

I'll repeat that - it provides no real additional security over turning off the services that you don't use. (Maybe it'll block trojans from phoning home, but A) if you've run a trojan your system is completely compromised and B)

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What it does do is break standard network applications (such as traceroute) and, more importantly, if badly written it will claim normal background network traffic is some sort of attack, alarming the user for no good reason. I've never heard of a 'personal firewall' that isn't badly written in this way. That doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

Why do the authors do this? Two reasons, as far as I've been able to gather.

The first is that most of the people writing these applications know next to nothing about IP networking. They may be pretty good windows developers, but they have no idea what normal network traffic looks like. That should make you nervous about their ability to block any real malicious intent.

The second is more insidious... Why is an end user going to buy / register / upgrade their 'personal firewall'? They're not going to do so if they don't perceive any benefit from it. If it were a properly written application that just sat there, doing its job quietly in the background, users would forget it was there. But if it pops up warnings about 'attacks' all the time then it's clearly Doing Something. Most of those warnings are entirely frivolous - normal network traffic. And the remaining few... well... if the 'personal firewall' has protected your system from the supposed 'attack'... why do you care about it? You're safe from that supposed 'attack', right? So why pop up warnings and alerts? To make you feel you're getting a service from this program and so you'll pay for updates or 'Pro' versions.

The bottom line is this... If you care about your home network security a lot, and you're interested in it, spend the time to learn about networking and build yourself a standalone firewall.

If you don't want to spend that amount of energy on it, buy a standalone dedicated NAT or NAT+firewall box. I like the NetGear RT-311 and its siblings, but there're a bunch of others out there too. It'll sit there, do its job and never bother you again.

If you want to play with a piece of windows software that makes you click all over the place, there's always minesweeper.

If you'll feel safer sleeping at night knowing there's a 'personal firewall' running on your system, then install one. As long as you pay no attention to the "hack attacks" it reports it's better than nothing. A free one, ideally, as few of them are worth paying for. Turn off all the alerts and logging - you'll just waste your time (and, more importantly to me, my time and the time of other network administrators your complaints go to) increase your blood pressure and provide no benefit to you. If you really want to leave them turned on and see where traffic is coming from, feel free, but remember that most of the traffic you see is harmless, and that even if it isn't harmless it can't affect your system (if it could, it wouldn't be logged). Oh, and try not to waste admins time with frivolous complaints.

"But, but, but reporting these alerts to network administrators will help them catch crackers!"

Uhm, no. I know a whole bunch of network security and abuse staff. The response to any complaint with ZoneAlarm, BlackIce etc logfiles in it is to close the ticket, usually with an annotation like 'GWF' (Goober with Firewall). 99% of those reports are frivolous, about normal network traffic. In the remainder of cases there's nowhere near enough data in the logfiles to provide any idea of why the end user is upset. If you send frivolous complaints that just wastes the time of the staff receiving them and prevents them from handling real security issues. How do you tell if a complaint is frivolous? If the sender doesn't understand basic networking, it's almost certainly frivolous. If the sender is complaining based on 'personal firewall' logs, it's definitely frivolous.

The abuse desk staff I talk with hate users of 'personal firewalls' more than they hate spammers. That should tell you something about how useful your complaints will be.

"You're just a unix bigot and don't like Windows applications!"

I don't like Windows applications for networking, no, as Windows isn't very good at it in general (with a few exceptions - some of the kernel level networking code in NT4 and NT5 is extremely sophisticated). As for being a unix bigot... I'm a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor, subscribe to Microsoft Developers Network and in my spare time produce Windows Network Applications.

Sam Spade Home - © - FAQ

Reply to
Kyle Stedman

OK. Forget that. When I'm reading your list, I'm getting sick. Please stop posting it or I cannot read your postings any more.

"deny/allow"? Drop or reject? "ip address or address range"? What's with netmasks? "inbound/outbound directions" - yes. "Phoning home", of course. What's with routing? "tcp/upd or both"?! Hello?! There are much more protocols than those two. "one or more ports"? Oh-my-FSM. Other protocols sometimes even don't have the concept of ports.

This is the usual incompetent drivel. But what should I expect?

Giving in, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

This is not true. Many people use them, because they don't understand what's going on and are believing the manufaturors of "Personal Firewalls", what they're promising.

Those people aren't idiots. The manufacturors are messing around with those people.

Yes.

That depends on the definition.

Yes. Exactly.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

Only idiots post such crap.

Reply to
Quaestor

Actually, many security types, people that make a living designing secure solutions, run PFW solutions on their mobile devices with 100% effectiveness. To bad people want you to believe that FPW are 100% useless.

Reply to
Leythos

Just one opinion, that's all. I'm running Win2K Pro, SP4, FAT32 instead of the more complicated NTFS, always run as Admin and have been virus free for three years - because of the so-called "Personal" firewall, Kerio 2.1.5

I check with Grisoft AVG7 (subscription).

Reply to
Alan Illeman

Questor is soliloquizing...

;-)

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

It's more than "just one opinion". He gave a lot of good reasons, though you obviously chose to ignore them.

Well, having different users on FAT32 would be utterly pointless anyway, wouldn't it?

That's plain wrong, because no firewall protects you from virii. When a firewall detects an infection you're already toast.

cu

59cobalt
Reply to
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers

So sorry your emotions are running away. If you find some reference materials on the subject, you will have some background to deal with the technology and the interfaces used to make it work.

suffice it to say, the windows freebie firewall lacks at least 50% of the controls of a competent product.

Reply to
Jeff B

Please learn the basics of networking with the TCP/IP protocol family, then try again.

If you're interested, you could start with Craig Hunts "TCP/IP", which you can find at O'Reilly's.

And you should read the RFCs, too, of course.

Try to find out, why "deny/allow" does not make sense as a decision for handling packets for a TCP connection for example. You can learn there, that there are many protocols on the same layer beside UDP and TCP, too, in the TCP/IP network protocol family. And you can learn, that some of them don't have the concept of ports like ICMP and IGMP, for example.

When you learned all this, you will notice yourself, that the list you offered is showing your incompetency.

After that point of time, and after you learned, what filtering packets in an OS kernel is for and how is it done, we can discuss about different firewalls again, OK?

Because then this discussion would make sense after all.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

Correct -- a PFW *may* stop the outbound payload of a virus, depending what it is and how the firewall is configured. But it does not stop most incoming viruses unless their propagation method involves an unusual port exploit. Which is often used by the fastest moving viruses, but the fast majority are the old fashioned click to infect type which PFWs gleefully pass, by design, just like any other attachment you download or recieve in email. The personal firewall can't control the inter-process communication that the malware gets to do once it's emailed itself to your system.

-Russ.

Reply to
Somebody.

go in peace :-)

Reply to
Jeff B

That doesn't explain why I've been virus free for so long.

Reply to
Alan Illeman

You are virus free because you use AVG.

The fact you also use a PFW is irrelevant. Claiming you are virus free "because of" a PFW is plain wrong, as 59cobalt pointed out.

Triffid

Reply to
Triffid

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