How secure is Windows Firewall?

[Laukev7]

http://it.slashdot.org/it/04/08/14/2146252.shtml?tid=201&tid=172

 

quote: Windows Firewall can be turned off by another application

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh god, that's just incredible.

[Canadian Lover]

So SP2 isn't great after all!

[skyman8081]

Wait, so a commercial firewall developer thinks that MS's free firewall isn't up to scratch?

What a suprise.


The firewall does a decent job qwith inbound connections, and prompts for apps listening on common ports.


But I'm sure that if MS made the XP firewall have everything that the end user could possibly want, people would whine that MS is putting commercial firewall makers out of business.

[Laukev7]

Flexbeta is not a commercial software developper. And the problem with Microsoft is not that they put software developpers out of business, the problem is that they leverage their monopoly position to take over other markets and integrate their products deep into the OS, where they don't belong.

[Orethrius]

It also doesn't matter WHO is producing the firewall, the fact that an external program can disable it is proof enough of a security glitch.  For those who don't believe that, would you consider your network secure if your router's firewall could be disabled by, oh let's say, Office?  I don't think so.

[skyman8081]

If you can manually disable it, so can an application.

Only those with admin rights can disable it.

Besides most windows users run as admin, so even a 3rd party one isn't safe there, as malware could just kill zonealarm.exe.

[WMD]

quote:Originally posted by Sauron / B0B:
Wait, so a commercial firewall developer thinks that MS's free firewall isn't up to scratch?

What a suprise.


The firewall does a decent job qwith inbound connections, and prompts for apps listening on common ports.


But I'm sure that if MS made the XP firewall have everything that the end user could possibly want, people would whine that MS is putting commercial firewall makers out of business.

Just because I feel like saying, that was copied right from Slashdot,  

Also, programs can only turn it off if the user has Admin rights (which most Windows users do).  And, running a User account in Windows makes a lot of stuff act weird.  

[solarismka]

quote:Originally posted by Sauron / B0B:
If you can manually disable it, so can an application.

Only those with admin rights can disable it.

Besides most windows users run as admin, so even a 3rd party one isn't safe there, as malware could just kill zonealarm.exe.

True. Optixpro can and does kill zonealarm.  But it doesn't matter if you are an 'admin' or not.  I've seen that trojan kill it regardless

[skyman8081]

yep! which is why I use a hardware firewall.

have automatic updating and AV scanners on my windows boxes.

and I have up-2-date (or the distro equivalent) and chkrootkit on cron for my linux boxes