firewall

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I am behind a hardware firewall, making a full featured firewall on my computer worthless absolutely worthless. I barely even have the Windows Firewall active, there is just no point in it when the only work it will have is legitimate traffic.

logicearth said:

I am behind a hardware firewall, making a full featured firewall on my computer worthless absolutely worthless. I barely even have the Windows Firewall active, there is just no point in it when the only work it will have is legitimate traffic.

hardware firewalls/routers only protect you from stuff originating on the dirty side of the device, on the clean side you are vulnerable to others on the lan subnet, tho hopefully if they are in your home you have some control over the lan members and have full wifi security (wpa2) enabled for the hackers that might 'borrow' your WAP...

they also do not protect you from traffic originating on your own pc, such as that from malware - trojan, spyware, virii etc. - or from you connecting to dodgy sites that might infect you since you originated the connection.

win7's firewall is a step up from the xp firewall in that you do have control over outgoing applications, but the interface for rules is awkward if you have anything more than the basic applications.

then there are the 'leaks' that matousec tests against & which form the basis for his ranking list for s/w firewalls. h/w firewalls are pretty much transparent to those exploits. his list is a bit out of date, as newer less vulnerable versions of some of the listed ones are now available.

h/w firewalls are a usefull adjunct as they will intercept a number of attacks, such as DOS (denial of service) and thus take quite a load off any software firewall so as to lessen it's impact on performance while you are under attack. the windows firewall is the bare minimum of protection.

kronckew said:

they also do not protect you from traffic originating on your own pc, such as that from malware - trojan, spyware, virii etc. - or from you connecting to dodgy sites that might infect you since you originated the connection.

If you are the type to install malware on your computers, then a firewall is the least of your concerns. Firewalls stopping malware is a ridiculous notion, that is not there job. A software firewall would not protect you from a dodgy site either, that task is left to a content filter. A firewall is merely a tool to allow authorized traffic through and block unauthorized traffic, that is all.

No, a full-blown firewall is as I said worthless absolutely worthless on my systems. I would actually like to get work done not micro-managing my computer.

logicearth said:

No, a full-blown firewall is as I said worthless absolutely worthless on my systems. I would actually like to get work done not micro-managing my computer.

I used to say the same thing and while the hardware firewall does quite well, sometimes software gets installed on my system either without me knowing it along with something else or because sometimes I visit sites maybe I shouldn't. That's what the software firewall is for. You say micro-managing, I say being in control of what comes in and what goes out on my system.

TheIgster said:

logicearth said:

No, a full-blown firewall is as I said worthless absolutely worthless on my systems. I would actually like to get work done not micro-managing my computer.

I used to say the same thing and while the hardware firewall does quite well, sometimes software gets installed on my system either without me knowing it along with something else or because sometimes I visit sites maybe I shouldn't. That's what the software firewall is for. You say micro-managing, I say being in control of what comes in and what goes out on my system.

+1 .. its another layer of the Secruity Onion!!