Why is my firewall off?

Leopard & Snow Leopard has the software firewall turned off by default.

Wedgetail wrote:
Leopard & Snow Leopard has the software firewall turned off by default.

I believe the gist of the OP's question is, "Why does SL ship with the firewall initially off?"

NewYorkYogi wrote:
I believe the gist of the OP's question is, "Why does SL ship with the firewall initially off?"

Because firewalls are poorly understood and a waste of time on a desktop system.

Begging to differ, etresoft but the Firewall is your friend.
The firewall protects your computer from users on other networks or the Internet.
This is an interesting read, but do NOT go near anything Symantec, even the link provided in the article.



-mj

Probably because a very high percent of computers connect to the internet through a router which is a hardware firewall and is usually better that a software firewall.

macjack, thanks for the link, curious (but not doubting) your cautions re Symantec?

Still, the OP's original question is valid and unanswered.

Because as Mac OS X ships, there are no open ports. So there is nothing to connect with.

As you start services, you open ports, but you also open those ports in the firewall as well, otherwise you would not be able to use the services.

As has been mentioned, if you are beind a home router, the router is going to stop all unsolicited connection requests anyway. In a coffee shop/hotel/public WiFi access point situation, if you happen to have services enabled, it would be worth while turning on your firewall in a restrictive mode.

+"In a coffee shop/hotel/public WiFi access point situation, if you happen to have services enabled, it would be worth while turning on your firewall in a restrictive mode."+

Good point!

Why?

A new Mac is shipped with the OS X pre-installed & will booted up to allow the user to setup it. Durning this procedure a network connection is requested but not required and the SL Firewall App isn't available at this time plus a Router's Firewall will not block it with it's default setup. Click on this link for more information about Mac OS X Security ...

http://www.apple.com/search/?q=MacOS+XSecurity&sec=downloads

Apple changed its firewall interface when moving from Leo (firewall was activated) to Snow (firewall was deactivated). To avoid confusion over the changed interface, Apple elected to leave the firewall deactivated under Snow, yielding only a tiny amount of incremental risk to the unwary user. I don't exactly remember why Apple though there might have been confusion. I think that the Company actually generated more controversy and gnashing of teeth by deactivating under Snow rather than activating under Snow as under Leo.

macjack wrote:
Begging to differ, etresoft but the Firewall is your friend.

No it isn't. A firewall is a server tool. It is pointless to run it on a desktop machine. The whole idea behind a firewall is to facilitate access, not to prevent it. If you turn on any sharing services, they will automatically open holes in your firewall because otherwise, they wouldn't be able to share anything.

The only thing a firewall will do is give you a false sense of security. Turning off all sharing services is the only way to get true security and will work better than any firewall.

The only thing a firewall will do is give you a false sense of security. Turning off all sharing services is the only way to get true security and will work better than any firewall.

Well, IMO, "True Security" does not exist anywhere, on anything, especial Computers.

Now I'm curious about your internet connection. Do you use a Router?

NewYorkYogi wrote:
macjack, thanks for the link, curious (but not doubting) your cautions re Symantec?

Just search Norton or Symantec on these boards. It is like H1N1 to Macs. More data has been lost and systems fried by running Symantec on a Mac than you can imagine. Of course, if you Windows on your Mac then you'll need something on the Windows side.

NewYorkYogi wrote:
Still, the OP's original question is valid and unanswered.

I think because the setup was originally confusing to beginners. They've left it off by default, (I'm not sure why) even though they simplified it a great deal in SL.



-mj

Corsair wrote a 40 page white paper on securing 10.5
http://research.corsaire.com/whitepapers/080818-securing-mac-os-x-leopard.pdf

True, if you are behind a hard wired router additional firewall protection would be redundant. But wireless is a different story. Also, Safari still opens most file downloads by default (as you may have noticed), and its anti-phishing IMO still isn't as good as Firefox.



-mj

It is like H1N1 to Macs.

The antivirus is the virus; the cure is worse than the disease. Got it.

Can't say Intego is my friend, either. There's a thread I posted where I discovered the NetBarrier uninstaller is broken and I was getting a console error every 10 seconds.