Windows has a firwall?!

Copyright © 2004 Virus Experts.com
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Introduction

Many people believe that Windows 2000 has no internet security firewall. Many people believe that Windows XP's firewall is too restrictive, and stops many from using it because it causes some applications to stop working correctly. Well, before you go out and buy (or open up your favorite file sharing program) the latest security firewall product, you may want to know that both Windows 2000 and Windows XP have a much more flexible firewall built-in, you just have to know where to find it.

A Little History

Before we dive in to a tangled discussion of firewalls and security policies, we should mention something about the Microsoft Windows NT family. Many people do not know that Microsoft actually has two product lines with the familiar Windows name. The consumer family line includes the following products:

• Windows 1.0 - 3.11
• Windows 95
• Windows 98
• Windows Me
• Windows XP Home Edition (NT 5.1)

The business, corporate, or non-consumer family line of Windows products include:

• Windows for Workgroups 3.11
• Windows NT 3.51
• Windows NT 4
• Windows 2000 (NT 5.0)
• Windows XP (NT 5.1)
• Windows Server 2003 (NT 5.2)

As you can see, the Windows NT family has mostly been marketed as a business-class operating system, but since the release of Windows XP (which is based on Windows 2000, and Windows 2000 is based on NT 4.0), the two product lines carrying the Windows name has been reduced to (in the case of XP), Windows XP with several editions available: Home Edition, Professional, 64-Bit Edition, Tablet PC Edition, and Media Center Edition.

This article will focus on Windows NT 5.0 and Windows NT 5.1, although much of the information found here can be applied to the entire NT 5.x OS family.

Where is this Firewall?

To access the firewall, you will need to:

1. Open up the Control Panel
2. Go to Administrative Tools
3. Go to Local Security Policy

This will bring up the Local Security Settings management console. Double click on IP Security Policies on Local Machine. If you have no other firewalls or IPSec policies configured, you will see the following:

• Client (Respond Only)
• Secure Server (Require Security)
• Server (Request Security)

None of the above should be an assigned policy (see the Policy Assigned column at the top).

Understanding the Firewall

TODO. What is a firwall? Different types? ingress, egress filtering? Default policies (accept-all-by-default, deny-all-by-default, etc.)

Building Your Security Policy

TODO.

Testing Your Security Policy

TODO.

A Working Firewall

TODO. Provide link to .ipsec file.

See Also

Internet Security 101

isec/101