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Personal firewall

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A personal firewall is an application which controls network traffic to and from a computer, permitting or denying communications based on a security policy.

A personal firewall differs from a conventional firewall in terms of scale. Personal firewalls are typically designed for use by end-users. As a result, a personal firewall will usually protect only the computer on which it is installed.

Many personal firewalls are able to control network traffic by prompting the user each time a connection is attempted and adapting security policy accordingly. Personal firewalls may also provide some level of intrusion detection, allowing the software to terminate or block connectivity where it suspects an intrusion is being attempted.

Features

A personal firewall features:

  • prevents an unauthorized user from accessing your PC, either from the Internet or from within your local network.
  • blocks some Trojan horse programs and many hostile applications that seek to take over your computer.
  • Automatically blocks intruders and thieves
  • Hides your computer from hackers
  • Automatically detects Internet attacks, like the CodeRed and Blaster worms
  • Monitors and regulates all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic
  • Gives you the power to decide which programs connect to the Internet
  • Shields you from being attacked through security holes in unpatched software
  • Prevents confidential information from being sent without your permission
  • Blocks banner ads and popup windows, so you can browse faster
  • New packages aimed at home users and small businesses are inexpensive and require little setup on your part.
  • Provide information about the destination server with which an application is attempting to communicate

Criticisms

  • Instead of reducing the number of network-aware services, a personal firewall is an additional service that consumes system resources and can also be the target of an attack, as exemplified by the Witty [1] worm.
  • If the system has been compromised by Malware, Spyware or similar software, these programs can also manipulate the firewall, because both are running on the same system. It may be possible to bypass or even completely shut down software firewalls in such a manner.
  • The high number of alerts generated by such applications can possibly desensitize users to alerts by warning the user of actions that may not be malicious (e.g. ICMP requests).
  • Software firewalls that interface with the operating system at the kernel mode level may potentially cause instability and/or introduce security flaws and other bugs.

Implementations

Free Firewall Software

Both Windows and the Apple OS X include limited software firewall solutions included in the operating system.

See also

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