Anything for OS X like ShieldsUP?

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Level 1

84 points

Anything for OS X like ShieldsUP?

For many of the years I had been using PCs running Windows, I was able to check the security of my firewall by using the Gibson Research on-line tool "ShieldsUP!". This tries to access various ports and reports whether any are visible, etc., to the outside world. (My combination of the firewall in my router and ZoneAlarm software firewall blocked all visibility outside.)

Is there anything for OS X like this?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 3.4GHz Corei7, 16GB, SSD + 2T HD

Posted on Aug 17, 2011 8:37 PM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

201,424 points

Aug 17, 2011 8:47 PM in response to murrayE

If you are behind a router you do not need to worry. If no Router, make sure your firewall is on. Enable stealth mode.

You can look at little snitch, this monitors outgoing connections

http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html

http://www.macworld.com/article/135888/2008/10/firewalls.html

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Answer 2

murrayE Author

Level 1

84 points

Aug 17, 2011 9:03 PM in response to murrayE

Oops: I just realized that grc's ShieldsUP! does work with OS X. I must have not clicked some button there.

Thus I was just able to verify that the first 1056 TCP ports on my iMac are "stealth", that is, invisible to the outside world. And that was without having set the Snow Leopard firewall for stealth mode!

This sort of information is reassuring to know. And sometimes there are situations where one needs to open a specific port; it's then good to check that only the particular port has been exposed.

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