poll::run two firewalls?

Im not new when it comes to computers. But a thread caught my eye...someone had been hacked and was told not to run 2 firewalls at the same time.
I was wondering if there was some validity to this?
I currently do run 2 firewalls and a nuke nabber....do you believe that the 2 firewalls conflict with each other or just add an extra layer of security?
im not running linux and if you have any suggestions to add i would appreciate it.

Depends on the setup. Certainly running two seperate firewall boxes is a common method of security (the creation of a DMZ) but if you are referring to running two firewalls on the same host at the same time, I would think (especially in the case of windows) that there may be conflicts between applications.

Good Evening

Well some conflict with eachother and others don't. And of course opinions will vary. Is a well configured single firewall adequate or do you need two? The link below has several discussions on this topic. But I do run two, but in a different config than I believe you are talking about. One on the computer and I use smoothwall on an older box as a router.

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=232041


cheers

That was a very informative link you posted. Thank you
I myself am running both sygate and zonealarm and havent experienced any problems.

** Knock on wood**
i also have a couple of av's
as well as spybot,adaware, and cwshredder.
i beleive untill i have problems i feel secure.
Thank you for contributing!!

From my experience, when running 2 firewall(firewall software) at the same box, it may conflict. But if we have firewall harware(quite expensive), and another one installed in your pc, this is nothing matter. But I'm not 100% guarentee that this will work, its depend on the type or brand or configuration of your box.

I'd think if you've got the resources to have one box acting as a firewall, and another as a NIDS, then you've got a decent setup, however, I don't think running two firewalls on one boxs makes as much sense as having one good firewall and rule set.


--PuRe

Quick question; what does *one* software firewall do exactly? Ie; what is its purpose, how does it achieve this?

Answer that and you'll see that having two is completely pointless, and is a complete waste of resources to boot.

Oh, and the white people of waco called: they want thier paranoia back ;)

It all depends on the Firewall Setup and implementation....

I guess properly configured single firewall is always more effective than poorly configured dozen of firewalls.... ( Iknow everyone is already aware of it.. so excuse me for it friends :) )

There are software firewalls that dont "go" together. The firewall package form PCCillin will prevent you installing Zone Alarm.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by Abtronic
Quick question; what does *one* software firewall do exactly? Ie; what is its purpose, how does it achieve this?

Answer that and you'll see that having two is completely pointless, and is a complete waste of resources to boot.

Oh, and the white people of waco called: they want thier paranoia back ;)

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**LOLL**
yea mabey i do overdo it, and thats just some of the toys in my toybox!!

i guess when it comes to security, i dont want to chance anything.
Thanks everyone who contributed.

Quote:

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i also have a couple of av's
as well as spybot,adaware, and cwshredder.
i beleive untill i have problems i feel secure.

---

You can have as many as AVs you want, but only have ONE running in the background.

Rather than buying a AV product from a company, why not search there website too see if they have a free online scanner?

Online scanners-
Trend Micro (housecall):
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Trojan scan:
http://trojanscan.com/

BitDefender:
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php

Panda Activescan:
http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

There are alot more.

Not a good idea on the same box IMHO.

McAfee, Norton, Agnitum and PCCillin certainly don't like it and tell you so!

Black Ice, ZoneAlarm and Port Monster don't seem to mind (or is it "care" :( )

I think that it is OK to look at specialist "firewalls" or "sandboxes" for e-mail and P2P applications, as these may not be covered by your firewall, particularly the free ones.

Two AVs are a good idea IMHO, but DON'T run two interactive scanners at once. I go for one from the Eastern Hemisphere and one from the West as they tend to find different things at any one time, and this partly addresses time zone delays.

A trojan scanner does not seem to interfere with firewalls, because it operates behind them. You do get conflicts with AVs though. For example AVG will tend to let Trojans through, but as soon as Moosoft's, "The Cleaner" detects it......so does AVG (sometimes) and you now have two apps trying to deal with the same problem :eek:

Two good tools that don't seem to conflict with anything..........presumably because they are detecting the actual infection process are:

Registry Prot:

http://www.diamondcs.com.au

and WinPatrol:

http://www.winpatrol.com

Good luck

Thank you for the advice, i will look into that further and you are right...
i was running spybot and adaware at the same time to save some time
and crashed the system....that blew!!

i will normally run a full system scan before going online and then defrag and connect.
**thought i was going to save some time and it kicked my ass**

thx again for the advice!!

Having 2 different brands of firewall is a common practice in the banking world. Usually they're combined with some kind of 'reverse' proxy.

You enter the network through firewall A and your connection gets terminated on the proxy (placed inside the DMZ of Firewall A). After the proxy scans/strips/cleans the request it will forward the connection to the 'real' webserver. This webserver is on a DMZ of firewall B.

This setup is highly secure but can be quite difficult to maintain. Especially if there are many websites, all with different security specs.