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[Eagle of Fire]

Nope, but then I never heard about someone using SP2 build in firewall either... You are about the first.

Now that you mention it, most everyone I talked to about SP2 said it was evil and messed up almost all the other programs already installed, and I myself noticed a lot of problem for some players of LSN because XP did not recognize the program anymore after they installed SP2...

Not really helping me getting fond of it. :blink:

[mouse31e]

Originally posted by El Pollo@Dec 22 2004, 05:49 PM
Microsoft improved their Built-In-Firewall in Service Pack 2. Haven't yet heard of any exploits for bypassing it. Did you ?

This is a complete myth.

Microsoft did not improve their firewall in SP2.

They only improved the part that blocks incoming traffic. They completely removed the part that blocks outgoing traffic.

SO if something slips through the firewall it can send all of your information anywhere it likes and the firewall won't even notice!

How can a one way firewall possibly be effective? :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[El Pollo]

Installed SP2 after buying my new PC this summer. Hadn't installed anything except XP then, so I don't have experience with this upgrading problems. Never had any problems with SP2 since, but haven't tried to play online games.

[El Pollo]

Originally posted by mouse31e@Dec 22 2004, 06:06 PM
They only improved the part that blocks incoming traffic. They completely removed the part that blocks outgoing traffic.

SO if something slips through the firewall it can send all of your information anywhere it likes and the firewall won't even notice!

How can a one way firewall possibly be effective? :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

Well, someone has to execute code on your system to do so. I'm no security expert, but how could he do this, when firewall blocks incoming traffic ?

[mouse31e]

There are plenty of things that get through firewalls. Anything that you get from a download without noticing, Anything the firewall doesn't know about...

Why do you think they issue updates to your firewall? It's because people are continually coming up with new ways of getting stuff into your computer!

EDIT: That's why if you want a free firewall you should use Zone Alarm or similar which monitors traffic both ways!

[Eagle of Fire]

That's also why you should disable XP built-in firewall and stop using it since you think you are safe, and use a true firewall and monitor each inbound and outbound attemps manually yourself.

It's not as bad as it sounds, you actually only need to setup authorisation once for each program accessing internet. And it's much safer that way when you know how it works.

I myself use Zone Alarm. Free and efficient.

However, using a true firewall won't solve all your problems. For instance, I use IE and if I want to use it on the internet (duh ) I need to allow it to go thru my firewall. However, a lot of malware enter a computer directly from IE, that's why I increased my IE security and disabled Flash and Java entirely. And even then a lot of spywares and malware get installed on my computer, so I use Spyware Blaster to prevent them from being installed, and then use Spybot - Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware SE Personal to hunt down those that are already in.

I usually do a scan at least every week, and everytime I want to play an online game which require steady connection (which is usually everyday).

Even with all those protections, I am pretty sure there is either a virus, a worm or a malware in function in my computer because it always try to connect to internet before XP actually load. :angry:

The fact that you are using Firefox is really on your side, tough you can expect it to be broken as soon as it become too popular. That's why XP is so hacked, because 80% of the whole world work with it and it get installed in almost every new computers!

[El Pollo]

You have to keep your system clean of malware anyway.

I don't claim that XP-Firewall is best Firewall out there. Surely is not. But any other firewall is only as good as I spent time in configuring it. I agree, that if you have sensible data on your PC, XP-Firewall might not be appropiate.

Btw: Can you make a recommendation for a good freeware firewall. I once tried Sygate Personal Firewall, but didn't liked it, because I didn't always understand what is was doing.

Edit: Sorry, I am too slow in typing. New to this forum as you can see!

[Titan]

Kerio has withstood a few serious attempts to hack as faar as it has logged..
Combine Kerio with AVG Anti-virus and you have the best FREE security-kit out there...

[Koen]

I have experienced a lot of problems with the standard firewall of SP2. I was trying to broadcast music, and it didn't work. Until I found out that the standard windows firewall was still running... After disabling it (and keeping zonealarm enabled), it worked.

[Tuttle]

Running two firewalls simultaneously is going to cause you grief. As for outgoing firewalls being more secure, any malicious code running on your PC can just kill the firewall process or uninstall its driver anyway. They're good for management, but they don't provide absolute security. A third-party firewall is a better choice if you know what you're doing, but Windows Firewall is still far better than the nothing that most people used to use.

A whole lot of SP2 installation problems come down to spyware already being installed on the PC -- it really doesn't like that much.