Is the Windows firewall working?
2 Comments Published by ITSGUI Man on Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 12:01 PM.
I'm running Windows XP and like most i've got the Windows Firewall turned on. But is it working? The best way to find out is to log all the activity and then analyse the results and see if you can find out who's been trying to hack into your PC and what connections they have made.
- Go to the Control Panel and open the Windows Firewall
- Click the Advanced Tab and the the Settings Button under Security Logging
- Change the path if you wish of the log file, plus tick the two options to Log dropped packets and any successful connections
You can cut and paste the log into Notepad/Wordpad and take a look but I must admit I didn't find it that easy to decipher. Googling it came up with the following cool Windows XP Firewall Logger which clearly shows you who's friend or foe!
Well, the answer actually is "No, it doesn't work". You have to know that Windows XP built-in firewall does not filter any outbound traffic. So, if you've got a trojan horse from email, your PC will be the bot sending bad traffic. The decision is using 3rd party software. I use Agnitum Outpost Security Suite on my laptop actually. And with all this firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-banner, anti-spam it really defends my PC while I'm online.
Windows Firewall? I wouldn't. Make sure your hardware firewall in your router is setup securely (non-default pw etc) and run a standalone soft firewall on basic to watch for errant outgoing packets as basic. Nothing else needed, frees up CPU, speeds up internet.
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