SP2 Built in firewall bug?

[LiquidX]

I thought that maybe SP2 built in firewall would be better than Zone Alarm which I like alot but it seems as if it does nothing. Zone Alarm when a program is trying to access the net would bring up a promp box asking if you wanted that particular program to access the net and would not let it unless you click yes or no. SP2 Firewall on the other hand will sometimes also bring the prompt box asking to give permission but there instances where it will still allow the program in question to access the net if you click nothing or just close the permission box even when you "Allow no exceptions" is checked. I uninstalled SP2 before so I not sure if somethimng didnt get borked or this is bug. Does this happend for anyone else?

Zone alarm would literally block every program from accessing the net but not SP2 firewall. The damn thing lets every program out and I can only imagine that its also letting every thing in.

 

[dargon]

The Xp built-in firewall only watches for incoming stuff, outgoing isn't touched. ZA checks both. It's not a bug, it's a design 'feature', Microsoft must have thought 'who'd want that functionality?'

 

[odoe]

This has come up a couple of times.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=803031&highlight=sp2+firewall
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=796726&highlight=sp2+firewall

Basically, the SP2 firewall will allow traffic on port 80, which is why it doesn't ask you about IE or most IM clients. If I understand it correctly, unless the program is going to try and act like a server such as BT or an ftp client, then you are not prompted. Maybe someone else could explain it better than I can.

 

[LiquidX]

Hmmm thanks. From reading it seems to mainly function at stoping incoming traffic. That kind sucks now I know why sometimes a couple of my games have been a little laggy. Quick time, media player and te rest of those craps were able to freely connect at will. That can be very bad if you get a trojan that only sends only info. Not sure if I will go back to Zone Alarm yet but its good to know.

 

[oldpablo]

Honestly, some of these firewalls can be pretty intimidating. Imagine standard joe blow user getting assaulted with dozens of firewall requests. Most likely they will just click whatever on top of getting pissed off by it. The firewall was designed to do a much better job against hackers/viruses then the previous one, but I don't think its meant to be full featured. I think it was designed the way MS designs most of their stuff... to work well with the approval of the widest user-base.

 

[Nazo]

Imagine nothing, I have to fight that very uphill battle in getting my sister and mother to use a stinking firewall at all. For my sister I was absolutely FORCED to set it to allow all programs without prompting because she'd just keep fricking turning the thing off rather than simply tell it to stop asking about the particular program. Then again, her computer is a mess, she installs so much junk it's sad. I had to reinstall because of a spyware so bad that it would open a million IE windows if ANYTHING accessed IE (this includes those stupid programs that integrate IE for no reason but sheer absolute lazy cheapness) which none of the anti-spyware programs I could find would 100% stop. My mother absolutely hates it and won't learn to click the remember the answer button, but at least she leaves the firewall turned on.

Seriously though, thanks to the fact that IE has more security holes than you can shake a fist at, it's quite simple to get a trojan if you use it (and again, those two insist on it no matter how many times I prove the others are better and still feel and run the same. Even my grandmother uses Opera now though I admit mainly for the zoom feature.) So outgoing connections still need to at least be REASONABLY controlled... I mean, if they do absolutely nothing else, they could at least maintain a databse of blacklisted programs known to be trojans/whatever.

Anyway, to summarize, ZoneAlarm is 100x better than SP2 firewall. It just requires a little setting up and most "average" users just give up without even being willing to put forth any effort whatsoever to learn how to click the fricking "remember my answer" button. Besides, they defeat the purpose of the whole thing by just automatically and without thinking hitting ok. I swear, if it said "Do you want to allow the program 'bigvirus_I_use_internet_to_wipeout_your_pc.exe' to access the internet" they hit yes...