Leopard's firewall, is it working?

[pendragon]

After upgrading to 10.5.1, one of the first things I did was to verify that my firewall remained enabled. So, in System Preferences/Security, Firewall tab, I verified that “Allow only essential services” was selected.

To ensure the firewall worked as designed, I then ran the “All Service Ports” test (first 1056 TCP ports) from Shields Up.

The results indicated that no ports were open and that all other ports were in “Stealth” mode (except Port 113 (Port Authority Database) which was closed). So at first, it seemed that the firewall was indeed working as designed.

But on a whim, I reset my firewall to “Allow all incoming connections”.

I then reran the same Shields Up test. To my surprise, the results were identical in both tests.

Thus, it seems (to me) that enabling the firewall serves no advantage.

Might it be that my router already performs/serves (duplicates?) the same functions as Apple’s firewall?  

Ah, confusion in Pendragonland...

[sandyman]

Try clearing your browsers cache before running the test a second time and aee if that makes any difference

Sandy

[pendragon]

QUOTE(sandyman @ Dec 8 2007, 09:21 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Try clearing your browsers cache before running the test a second time and aee if that makes any difference.

I cleaned the cache as suggested, shut down & restarted, and then reran the Shields Up test as before. A good suggestion, but alas, no change in results.  

[rongold]

How are you connected to the Internet? If you are connected via a router, then the router probably has a firewall which is why you see no difference in Shield Up tests regardless of the Leopard Firewall settings.
Also, do you have 10.5.0 or 10.5.1 installed. Appledchanged the firewall settings in the upgrade.
There are  long discussions of problems and unknowns about the Leopard firewall in Leopard Support Disccusions at Apple: one example - http://discusssion.apple.com/thread.jspa?m...00&#5799600
Also see article in TidBITS: http://db.tidbits.com/article/9294.

[pendragon]

Rongold,

I'm using 10.5.1.

After reading the (very useful) links you provided, I presume the Shields Up results are a consequence of my router. Moreover, Apple still has much work to do re their firewall software.

Many thanks!