Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Windows 7 -- ribbons for everyone!
nosh:
Can a router block unsolicited outgoing traffic? There's a BIG difference between malware screwing up my system and malware calling home and sending out my personal information. And just coz some relatively sophisticated app can do that anyway, irrespective of which firewall I'm using, doesn't mean I give the green light to any script kiddie to do that. An outgoing alert has actually helped me detect malicious activity on my system on one occasion so fact > theory as far as I'm concerned.
f0dder:
nosh: outbound blocking of the type you want is a false sense of security - and it tends to make people lazy. To the point where you probably don't realize you've got a piece of malware because it's hijacking an internet explorer connection and sending out whatever as a perfectly legitimately-looking HTTP connection on port 80. If you want outbound filtering that works, we're talking a completely different level of sophistication, and fascist-tightened firewall rules.
Otherwise, you're far better off with simple a NATing router without DMZ, Windows Firewall to protect against LAN/WIFI attacks, and possibly a decent pro-active/behavioral-blocking antivirus app.
TucknDar:
So the ribbon will find its way into the Windows Firewall?
:P
Carol Haynes:
And why not - of course it would only have one tab with two settings On and Off - but wouldn't it look pretty ;)
Paul Keith:
So the ribbon will find its way into the Windows Firewall? :P-TucknDar (September 22, 2008, 11:22 AM)
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That might just make me enable it. :-*
The Windows Firewall is quite adequate, it's stable, and it's light on resources. The bad things said about it has mostly been out of ignorance, FUD, or marketing interests from the various software firewall vendors. If you need outbound filtering, you need a proper firewall box, not a software firewall on client machines.
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Ignorance is the core issue that makes the firewall most dangerous.
End-users generally don't need to mess with the firewall, especially since most proper apps these days add exceptions during install or config time.
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Windows Firewall turned out to be one of the two most significant reasons (the other being DCOM activation security)[4] that many corporations did not upgrade to Service Pack 2 in a timely fashion. Around the time of SP2's release, a number of Internet sites were reporting significant application compatibility issues, though the majority of those ended up being nothing more than ports that needed to be opened on the firewall so that components of distributed systems (typically backup and antivirus solutions) could communicate.
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Security through ignorance is much more dangerous than security through obscurity.
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