Dana Epp's ramblings at the Sanctuary: How to get more out of your Windows Firewall


« Mark debunks Steven Gibson's claims that WMF issue is a backdoor \| Main \| New blog worm in the wild » January 20, 2006 How to get more out of your Windows Firewall So have you ever wondered how to tell if your Windows firewall is working? Ever notice that there is no information really telling you what is going on? Why not turn on the logging facilities for the firewall so you can see dropped packets and allowed connections? To enable logging of dropped packets: netsh firewall set logging droppedpackets=enable To enable logging of connections: netsh firewall set logging connections=enable If you want to see the firewall configuration for logging: netsh firewall show logging There you have it. Turn it on and you will now be able to look at the log (default %windir%\pfirewall.log) and do your bidding. Update: Fixed type in cmd line option for logging. Thanks Tom! Posted by SilverStr at January 20, 2006 12:25 PM \| TrackBack Comments The set commands didn't work for me. Here's what did work (need to add the 'logging' keyword): netsh firewall set logging droppedpackets=enable and netsh firewall set logging connections=enable Posted by: Tom at January 20, 2006 03:40 PM Whoops. Good catch. Typo on my part. All fixed now. Thanks Tom! Posted by: Dana Epp at January 20, 2006 04:11 PM You also missed how to set the logfile size... eg: netsh set logging set logging maxfilesize=20480 or its location: netsh set logging %windir%\pfirewall.log Posted by: Stephen Gennard at January 23, 2006 09:02 AM Hey Stephen, Didn't miss it. The default of 4096KB in the Windows directory seems to work pretty well for most situations. I wouldn't change it unless you have a special need to. Posted by: Dana Epp at January 23, 2006 09:10 AM		My 5 Favorite Books Writing Secure Code Secure Programming Cookbook Security Engineering Secure Coding Principles & Practice Inside the Security Mind My 5 Favorite Papers Smashing the Stack Penetration Studies Covert Channel Analysis of Trusted Systems DoD Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria NSA Security Recommendation Guides Archives January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 GeoURL

January 20, 2006

How to get more out of your Windows Firewall