Security on the Internet… This topic has been actively discussed by the media of varying degrees of “yellowness” for many years now, completely forgetting that it would be nice to give some specific recommendations, and not tell a bunch of terrible, but not too believable stories.
I would like to tell you a little about how to set up a firewall yourself, without resorting to the services of various kinds of computer help.
What is this
Before talking about the settings, you need to make a small digression into the depth of the topic. A firewall is a special program that prevents intrusions into your computer from the depths of the Internet, and also blocks the actions of spyware that can transfer your personal information to the side.
When is it really needed?
Contrary to popular belief, your personal computer is unlikely to be attacked by evil hackers. Of course, if you are some kind of commercial director of a bank, then this can really become a reality, but everyone else need not be especially afraid.
But if you have a "white" IP (not dynamic),you set up a simple ftp server at home or decide to set up a site on your home computer as an individual masochism … Then a firewall will definitely come in handy for you!
How to configure the firewall correctly so that it can cope with all the tasks assigned to it as efficiently as possible? Let's make a reservation right away that we will talk about general settings, since there are too many utilities of this kind on the modern market.
Setting packages
First, let's set up the rules that apply to incoming packets. This is more important, since a normal firewall will probably handle the outgoing ones by itself (based on the rules prescribed by the developer).
Deny all incoming "correspondence" (TCP) on ports within 1-1025, as well as UDP on ranges 1-1024. What is it for? The thing is that it is there that there are most of the “holes” in the protection of the Windows OS family. In general, it would be nice to find out their list even before setting up the firewall.
Be sure to close the doors on TCP 5000 as well as on UDP 1900. As a result of all the above actions, most of the system ports are under fairly reliable protection, the level of which satisfies all the requirements of the average user.
But how to set up a firewall, which Windows 7 provides even in the basic package? If you do everything we have described above, you can consider yourself completely protected.
What can be opened?
You can open DNS (and for the company UDP 53), FTP (TCP 20-21). If there is such a need (your own http server), you can also open TCP 80. Almost all ICMP packets can be safely allowed. A little trick: if you disable access to port 80 of remote computers from ICQ, then the amount of advertising will be significantly reduced.
Since setting up a firewall using the methods described above is quite simple, even beginners and completely inexperienced beginners will surely cope with it. Note that not a single firewall can compensate for the tortuosity of the user's hands, and therefore once again do not visit dubious sites, do not open links that lead to who knows where!
And how to open the firewall completely? As a rule, in the settings of any such application there is an item "allow all" or something similar. Use it as little as possible.
