Slashdot Mirror
How Secure is Windows Firewall?
Garret writes "Though Microsoft is doing their part in protecting Windows users from internet attacks by including a firewall in their latest service pack, one has to wonder just how secure is the Windows Firewall from XP Service Pack 2? Not too good according to Flexbeta. Their recommendation is to turn off Windows Firewall and get an alternative such as ZoneAlarm or Sygate PF. Simply the fact that Windows Firewall can be turned off by another application is enough to tell me Microsoft has goofed again." PCWorld also has a story about the new firewall capability.
Why are windows users so obsessed with "stealth"?
It's annoying on two levels, firstly it breaks the requirements of the rfc's leaving other nodes on the network hanging waiting to see of a connection is going to succeed or be rejected, waiting for timeouts isnt fun. secondly, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO POINT, it is trivial to find out if there is a node at that address, all sufficiently intelligent scanners can tell if there is a machine there, nmap for example. YES WINDOWS USERS, I'M TALKING TO YOU, get rid of that stealth crap, if there is no machine there the nearest router will return no such host...if there's no icmp from the router, we know that there's a windows user there (of course, we cant determine the operating system of the node, but everyone knows only windows users do this)...
It's pointless, it's only used because having a "stealth" computer sounds cool on proprietory firewall marketing material (would it be so desirable if it were called "filtered"), please turn it off...
I've installed SP2 on two machines now. In both cases SP2 had me reboot, and before offering a log-in prompt it presented a screen where I could enable or disable automatic updates. This is an administrative setting, and it should not have presented itself prior to an authenticated login. Sure, it only happens once, but by design it violates secure computing practices.
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
While their new XP SP2 firewall is somewhat degraded comared to, say, ZoneAlarm, thats not entirely a bad thing. The new firewall is a step in the right direction, especially being on by default. Not only that, but by not including a "top of the line" firewall in XP, they allow for a market where 3rd parties can still sell firewalls as opposed to being yet another software industry crushed by Microsoft.
I have run Windows XP Professional since its release. I run my box 24x7 connected to a 2MBit cable connection. I use the Windows firewall and have auto-updates downloaded automatically. I have an ftp port open using the Microsoft/IIS ftp server. I have a port open for remote desktop. It's been this way for 2+ years.My box has never been hacked into.
So, now some wise asses can ask for my IP address, sure. But my point is that by taking just the most basic precautions, you reduce your chance of being hacked to just about nothing.
The new firewall may not be perfect, but it will further reduce the number of easy targets, which is a giant step forward.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
Wait, a commercial firewall developer thinks Microsoft's free firewall isn't up to the challenge? Wow, what a surprise! What if Microsoft had put a full-fledged firewall into SP2? The same companies would be whining about how Microsoft bullied them out of the market.
Save your time - don't bother. It adds absolutely nothing to the body of knowledge. It reports that it blocks all the ports very adequately. It also reports that it doesn't block outgoing connections from your computer! Really? Well that has been common knowledge for the last year. Windows Firewall only blocks incoming connections. This doesn't mean it is less than adequate. It does point out that Windows responds when certain standard port connections are attempted. This is a good compromise, but hardly a hole in the firewall - it is not a hole in a firewall to block connections using certain standard ports. And as for stopping the firewall using another Windows command - absolutely no evidence supplied. FUD!. Windows Firewall is pretty good.
Hi;
The Windows Firewall is probably adequate if you only have a single computer and are connecting to the internet.
It is not built for network (ICS traffic bypasses any ICF filters) and so has absolutely no value for perimeter value.
Like most commercial products from Microsoft, supportability in Windows Firewall is more important than security. If you need security over supportability by Microsoft staff, this is not the product for you. But it is not bad for what it does.
It also has no outbound controls, unlike other personal firewalls. This is a slight issue, but I don't think it is major (what about hijacking IE to make the connections?)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It's not "LOL at M$", it's "LOL at millions of XP users". Microsoft isn't suffering (I hear they make good bank off their OS), it's the end user who has to put up with poor security.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
In any event, it's obvious this is not a cure-all since it won't block outgoing connections. But it's still a big improvement and ought to immunize XP users against at least one class of attacks. In fact, coupled with a virus (especially an email virus) scanner it ought to wipe out 99.95% of all Windows desktop compromises. That's a pretty damn big step and we should credit MS for taking it, even if it doesn't go quite as far as we'd like.
It doesn't matter whether you're on Linux, on Windows, or on anything else, a firewall has to be outside the control of the objects it's protecting against. For Windows Firewall to protect against local applications, it would have to be running outside the security permiter around those applications.
I don't care if you're Windows Firewall or Zone Alarm, any settings the user can change an application can also change, because no application that the user runs can have any more rights than the user. Whatever the user interface application does, another application can do as well.
I agree that if you have to use Windows, you should use TPF. But, make no mistake, you have no way of really knowing for sure that TPF is actually seeing *all* of the connections. Your best setup is to use TPF on Windows, but also have a separate hardware firewall anyway.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
It's incredible how ignorant and misleading this article is.
.NET code), it can do ANYTHING I can do. That includes turning off firewalls.
First of all, if the user using the machine is running as an admin, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO PREVENT THE FIREWALL FROM BEING DISABLED BY A 3RD PARTY PIECE OF SOFTWARE. Period. Guess what! Zonealarm and Symantec's stuff has the same 'fault'. If I have admin privs, and I run a piece of software (unless it's managed like
Software running as a non-admin user CANNOT TURN OFF THE FIREWALL. That's all you can expect.
Second, outgoing protection just makes stupid people feel better. Any programmer with a clue can write software that gets around outgoing firewall protection. It took me about 20 minutes with VB (yeah, VB!!!) to write a proof of concept app that is able to do whatever it wants on the net even with Zonealarm installed.
The only way to reliably restrict outgoing communications is at the borders of the network, not on the machine generating the traffic.
All this FUD makes me sick.
Like the advice wilderness survival instructors have about knives. What's the best survival knife? The absolute best? It's the one you have with you. All the others are useless.
Being installed by default is a "feature" more important in real life than any other.
(Yes, I'd run something else in addition).
> Simply the fact that Windows Firewall can be turned off by another application is enough to tell me Microsoft has goofed again.
Balls. The fact the Windows Firewall can be turned off makes it exactly the same as every other personal firewall, including ZA and Sygate.
Malware has been disabling the firewalls of machines it infects for years. It is simply not possible for a firewall to remain an effective security measure on a machine where hostile code has been run at the same level of privilege.
Once the attacker's code is running on your machine, the game is over and you have lost. Until we get full operating-system level sandboxing (whereby applications and users are fully protected from each other's interference until the user/admin explicitly grants rights), this will always be the case.
The main difference between the Windows Firewall and other personal firewalls is that it only blocks incoming traffic. But so what? An outgoing traffic block is of no use if the outgoing traffic is generated by hostile code on the local machine, as it can just as easily shut the firewall down completely.
Other firewalls still provided the feature because it figured most malware wouldn't bother detect and kill all the different brands of firewall. But Windows Firewall, soon to be very widely installed due to its default-on nature, would present a much more attractive target; soon every new virus, worm and piece of spyware would turn the block off as the first thing it did. Therefore the feature would be offer zero additional security.
Flexbeta's reviewer seems to have grasped the vocabulary of security countermeasures with no actual grasp of their practical implications. In summary: feh.
Contrary to what Flexbeta says, I suggest it's a better idea to first get the new firewall package, disconnect from the internet and then switch the firewall off before installing and initiating the new one.
Switching the firewall off [no matter how weak it is] while connected to the net will open your machine up to all sorts of problems.
When will people learn that the contents of your computer may be irrelevant to many viruses and hacks? If the goal of the virus writer is to hijack your machine in order to use it as a spam relay or zombie, you don't have to have anything interesting on your computer at all...the virus will conveniently come with its own interesting stuff to install on your machine!
Heh, I was just about to reply saying the same thing. Just because Microsoft offers an API to turn off or disable the firewall doesn't mean it's any less secure than just doing what you described. In fact, doing what you described is far easier (or stopping/disabling the service, etc).
Saying it's a bad idea for the reason stated in the write-up is just plain ignorant.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Is still around 10000000 times better than no firewall.
and the 'doesnt block outbound traffic' flaw everyone's going on about is similarly a good thing, as the PCworld article said:
Microsoft's user testing showed that asking users to approve every application trying to communicate with the Internet tends to backfire.
"If you flood the user with messages like that, they say 'yes' all the time," he says.
Just like making passwords minimum 25 character length won't improve security as people will just write them down. This is good enough for the majority.
Find me something that -can't- be turned off by another application, if you know how it works?
That's a really lame complaint. If a program has the proper authorities, or can hack the proper authorities, then of course it can stop the operating of another application.
In Unix, they call it "kill".
How many Windows viruses will auto kill your task-window process whenever they see it come up? I bet lots of them. Same deal.
While delousing Windows boxes, I usually find myself downloading the least popular anti-virus programs I can possibly find to do it, because then I am usually able to get it running on the machine without bringing the whole system down.. any good virus would automatically kill norton, mcafee, and other popular virus scanners..
and even if you can't kill the running process, if you have access to change the configuration files, then you can effectively take it down that way as well..
think about your complaints before you make them!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/