[mark4man]

hello...

I used to run Norton Personal Firewall...& it had a function that would detect & disallow dangerous connections.

for example, it used to pop up from time to time w/ an 'Internet Access Control' window...during web surfing...advising me to block a high risk remote system which was attempting to access my machine. They were various Inbound TCP, UDP, IMCP & NetBIOS Services...utilizing any number of different ports.

So my question is...now that I'm running XP Pro...(& assuming my Windows Firewall is up & running)...does Windows Firewall have a function that accomplishes the same thing ???

thanks,


mark4man

[Tipstaff]

To be honest, Windows Firewall is crap. Every machine I sell I disable it right away, and install Comodo Firewall (also known as Comodo Internet Security) in its place. It's consistently one of the best Firewalls on the market, and it's completely free. There are 3 different levels of Firewall protection you can choose to install, from basic Firewall, Firewall with some malware protection (port specific), and Maximum (which has too many options to list). With it you can do application, port, zone, and even connection specific protection, as well as define policies for certain types of applications, and how to handle responses by certain types of attacks. There's a bunch of other options too, such as the fact that you can run it in different "modes", from paranoid to training/disabled for the malware defense portion, and block all to training/disabled for the Firewall portion.

Comodo Firewall, along with a router/gateway that has a decent built in hardware firewall will pretty much button you up nice and secure.

[IvanV]

Sorry to slightly hijack the thread, but, Tipstaff, is Windows firewall in Vista also crap? I intended to install Comodo, but found out that Windows Firewall with Advanced Security applet (under Administrative Tools) gave me similar configuration options to what other firewalls offer and it seemed decent enough to me. Bad call?

[GigaWatt]

disable Windows firewall, as Tipstaff wrote, it's crap... just install some other firewall, for example, i use NetLimiter in combination with NOD32 AV Business Edition...

[Tipstaff]

Originally Posted by IvanV

Sorry to slightly hijack the thread, but, Tipstaff, is Windows firewall in Vista also crap? I intended to install Comodo, but found out that Windows Firewall with Advanced Security applet (under Administrative Tools) gave me similar configuration options to what other firewalls offer and it seemed decent enough to me. Bad call?

2 of the biggest problems with Windows Firewall is that it can be easily disabled by something, an application for instance, on your machine (the fact that you can install a Firewall software, like ZoneAlarm, and that software will disable Windows Firewall so that it can take over those duties shows you how easy it is to disable it), plus it's also more concerned about things coming in than it is about communication going out. Sure, it allows you to pick things to block that might be trying to communicate, but what it's actually doing is misleading you. All the prompts that Windows Firewall actually make is about blocking an incoming connection. Let's say you are updating your anti-virus. The AV software talks to their server, sending data out to them, that server would communicate back, maybe on a specific port, and when it does Windows Firewall would pop up asking you if you want to allow it in or not. Say yes, and it can now talk back and fourth easily. Now, if that app were a Trojan, the fact that any data got sent out at all shows how useless Windows Firewall really is. If that Trojan is making it look like it's Windows Update that is doing the talking, then Windows Firewall won't even warn you that any communication is happening.

[IvanV]

Thanks for the reply, I'll get Comodo ASAP.

I thought that Windows Firewall wouldn't be so easy to disable because of the UAC, which I left on and hardly noticed. Also, the "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" seemed like it had all the right settings, but I bumped into certain problems trying to get it to work the way I wanted it. Blocking a single application was easy, but I, naturally, wanted to block all unauthorized outbound connections. Unfortunately, when I did that, I was unable to get Opera to load a single web page, even though I made it an outbound rule that allowed it to contact any host by any protocol and even adding an inbound rule didn't help. How it's supposed to work is a mystery that I apparently wont be solving.

[GigaWatt]

Originally Posted by IvanV

How it's supposed to work is a mystery that I apparently wont be solving.

i think that even the engineers at microsoft use other firewalls than the built in one...

[charm_quark]

Originally Posted by GigaWatt

i think that even the engineers at microsoft use other firewalls than the built in one...

lol, i think so too, but i'll go for zone alarm if i got the cash!

[GigaWatt]

this is totally offtopic, but i read somewhere that to make the default sounds under Windows XP, a pirated version of Sound Forge was used, which wouldn't surprise me... hahahaha

back on topic...

i've been using NetLimiter for about a year now... it's ideal for my needs...

[Takaharu]

Windows Firewall is great, if you want nothing to work properly.
We're running with all Windows Firewalls turned off at my workplace because when it's turned on with the default settings you can't ping the PC (or tracert it), see if the PC's actually there, monitor network & Internet activities and it prevents many applications - even at network level - from communicating properly.
It sucks, even more than McAfee Antivirus (which is really saying something!), which we also - regrettably - use.

For freeware, Zonealarm and Comodo I've found are fine - haven't had any problems with either of them. For paid, my preference is Bitdefender Internet Security.