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Why allow unrestricted incoming access to Firefox in the firewall settings?

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  • Last reply by fbg00

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser
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Quote from http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Configuring%20ZoneAlarm%20Free%20Firewall and similar help pages:

"Ensure that Firefox has a green check mark for each each category in the list - Access-Trusted, Access-Internet, Server-Trusted, Server-Internet: click on the ? icon for each category, and then select Allow."

DNS lookups are "connectionless" UDP. Outgoing TCP connections establish what incoming data is allowed. While (hopefully) a border firewall is in place, allowing all incoming connections at the computer's software firewall seems dangerous. Can a security expert please share a little rationale for this advice?

Quote from http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Configuring%20ZoneAlarm%20Free%20Firewall and similar help pages: "Ensure that Firefox has a green check mark for each each category in the list - Access-Trusted, Access-Internet, Server-Trusted, Server-Internet: click on the ? icon for each category, and then select Allow." DNS lookups are "connectionless" UDP. Outgoing TCP connections establish what incoming data is allowed. While (hopefully) a border firewall is in place, allowing all incoming connections at the computer's software firewall seems dangerous. Can a security expert please share a little rationale for this advice?

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fbg00
fbg00
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For what it's worth, I recently started getting alerts from McAfee Internet Security suite that Firefox is attempting to allow incoming TCP connections. Unfortunately the log files are dismally un-informative so I haven't yet been able to determine the port, which plugin if one is involved, etc. I'll have to mess around with it a bit. I'll post an update if I find something interesting.