Is Microsoft's Firewall Secure?

[Jonesy69]

I've also noticed in some @ home testing that when a SYN attack is launched against a machine running the MS SP2 firewall service it starts stumbling all over itself (mouse gets jerky, it eats up alot of CPU time). Now I know I'm about to speak linux, but I think it has more to do with the firewall being in "kernel" space than "user" space (hope that makes sense) Now as all know, this is the purpose of a SYN attack but even good ol Zone Alarm handled it more gracefully. *shrugs*

However, Zone Alarm is NOT installed and activated by default so I have to give credit where credit is due.

Now if only MS would stop pushing half finished **** out to market...

[chsh]

It can take as little as ping -f over a LAN to bring an XP box to its knees (from a 200MHz box no less). The firewalls I've noticed huge usage on were:
- Sygate
- ZoneAlarm
- Default XP Firewall
No such difficulty occurs doing the same to a linux box.

OldRedFox, SP2 is far more than just a firewall, so your argument about XP SP2 being for SOHO environments solely based on the fact that most corporations will have a firewall is silly. There are more large network-affecting changes in SP2 than small/no-network changes. Keep in mind also that large businesses feel the dollar impact of insecurity (be they worms, viruses, break-ins, etc.) far more than SOHO businesses.

Originally posted by pooh_sun_tzu
Sp2 ICF does a good job by default of fixing most problems without crippling usability, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved by manual configuration.

I'm sorry, but I had a good laugh at this given how large the (as of yet incomplete) list of software broken by SP2 is, and the number of things affected adversely by the firewall.