uhm ..yeah..
bottom line, Use a firewall if your not a fool.. lol

Ever considered this as flame bait?

I beleive setting up a firewall is a security precaution . And of course you get the learning experience i mean seriously think bout it, especially if you wanna be a network admin or an IT or something . The more knowledge you have of securing systems the more job market you have. My personally on my gateway/router machine i have ipchains and portsentry installed and working at 100% and i can still play my games and use my file transwer functions with my messenger services. So it is possible to have a very secure system and be able to use all of your programs. I mean lets look at my setup

Portsentry -> a program that log and detects a portscan and os fingerprint. Giving the attacker/scanner/cracker bogus info and then putting them on a block list completely taking away any access to me. And they have no way of ever attacking me from that same ip.

IPtables -> i have so much shit blocked that i dont need, like most pop up servers so i didnt have to waste money on stupid shit. Cause my windows machine is attached to my server.

But if you cant handle setting up a good system that is secure , then oh well on you. What i think is that you tried to , and couldnt handle it. Some kids cant, i know i couldnt at first but i didnt give up.

I am a security admin for a big financial company and you ...you are the dumbest person ever! Listen to youself.

and you ...you are the dumbest person ever!
There really is no need to insult people, and trying to drive your point home using the sole argument he's "dumb" (your words, not mine) instead of offering good arguments, well that's dumb because you miss the point, it's dumb cuz it's counterproductive and it's dumb because you didn't take the chance to promote "safer" computing.

If you are a "security admin" then you should know, or inform yourself about, the things this community needs.

Just one thing about this topic.
I've been into network setting up for 2 years and I saw things... I saw things... hard to believe and undestand.
A message to the people which are not using a firewall: PLEASE, DO USE A FIREWALL and if you can't configure yourself, look for help. It's not only for protecting your data, but also for protecting other people from you.

I have not read the posts before but a firewall does not protect you really from today's internet. Securing should start at the base system (= hardening), and include service securing and after all - as a last step only a packet filter. Everything combined is good practice and works well.

I have not had a single incident (but a damn lot of attempts) since I secured the whole server structure of a couple of medium sized company networks...

well friends, you all have an interesting point to share.
Eventually truth is like a diamond that stands in the center of a circle that we all form. So that everyone has A PIECE OF THE VIEW, but not all the diamond can be seen from only 1 point of the circle's shape. Eventually sharing all our views here enriches everyone of us to get a MORE COMPLETE OVERALL PICTURE of the subjects aproached.
I'm new here but I really like what I've read up to now (on the use(less) of fwl...for example)

My favourite antivirus for Windoze is Panda Antivirus , and they have a freeware version for Linux, No support mind you. Its not in Opensource spirit, but protection is more important , for me at least.

I run a firewall on the gateway to all my live machines and then also configure iptables on the individual linux servers just for some added security it is definately better to be safe than sorry. Actually for a bit of fun I don't mind port scanning the linux servers and the windows servers to make sure everything shows up fine.

In some situations a firewall can be unneeded. For instance I have a server that runs one service that listens on the network and it must be accessible to the public. We don't have this machine behind a firewall and never have. We don't really need one because all a firewall would do is have a rule to allow everyone to this port. One problem we have is if someone does DOS us we don't have a way to block offending ip's. In this situation we would block them in a upstream router. This is the only case that we don't have a firewall protecting our servers all of the rest are strictly locked down. Even behind a firewall I feel you should lock your servers down as if they aren't behind a firewall. Harden everything and life is easier.

I am reminded of a fellow I know who was adamant about firewalls for Windows. He is a knowledgeable fellow, and he insisted that they were unnecessary and placed a burden on the system.

He and I had many debates on this topic on another board (The Motley Fool). He said that securing windows by turning off file and printer sharing, disabling netbios, enhancing IE security, and running antivirus software was quite sufficient. His justification was that there were no extant exploits against Windows that managed to enter the system when those services were turned off; all exploits against windows required the user to do something stupid such as open an attachment, or came about through browser vulnerabilities which a firewall wouldn't protect against anyway.

My argument was that the fact there is no such exploit today doesn't mean there won't be one tomorrow, and a firewall was one layer in what should be a multi layer defense strategy. The extra layers provided protection against more things - including the possibility that the user made a mistake and, for instance, turned netbios on accidently.

We went round and round and never agreed.

Then the Blaster worm hit. Suddenly there was an exploit that entered a Windows system when it was connected to the internet, with the user needing to do nothing. My position was therefore fully justified, and he actually had the decency to admit he was wrong and reverse his position.

Running a firewall is not "the answer" to system security. It is one tool. Any prudent person will employ a number of tools, including a firewall, in the effort to keep systems clean, tidy, secure, and not zombified.

jiml8,

I started this thread a long, long time ago and had forgot about it until I got an email notification that somebody had replied again. My point was a home user running Windows XP with an anti-virus, automatic updates, and possibly Firefox and an anti-spyware program does not need to have a firewall turned on. I have not changed my mind, I still don't use the Windows XP firewall (although the SP2 firewall is more friendly than the SP1 firewall).

The blaster worm is NOT a valid example, a patch was issued a MONTH before Blaster unleashed hell. Source: [The Security Bulletin]

I don't know about that one. With the ever present 0 day exploits it would be good practice to have one. I assume you are not running any external listening programs ie file and print sharing etc...

Xylon,

I think you need to be more educated on network security to make the statement that a firewall is not neccessary. It is certainly unneccessary if you don't mind re-installing your compter all the time

Your computer has not been attacked doesn't mean that it won't be attacked. Also you may not need to have high security level (notice the word 'may') if your computer does not function as a server, or, if you are disconnected from internet.

In fact, computers are doing much more than they used to. The more functions it has, the more potential security holes there exists. Your computer is like your house. Will you leave your doors open even if there's nothing special in the house?

As simple as that.