just wondering when i get my new mac if its got a firewall built in or will i have to fork out some more money for the software?
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Has Mac os X 10.2 got a firewall?
- Thread starter abdul
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There is a rudimentary firewall. You are much better to use a seperate machine as your router / firewall. If not that, buy a real firewall program.
* edit for bad spelling
* edit for bad spelling
Yes, it's got a firewall in System Preferences->Sharing->Firewall. I don't use it as I have a hardware firewall, so I don't know how good it is, but from what I can see it blocks all incoming traffic on any ports you don't specifically allow.
well...
the 'firewall that comes with osx is actually a port blocker.
it is as good as any other firewall you can install on your maschine, because it eficently blocks incoming requests to ports that you don't know anything of.
it blocks for example iTunes sharing by default, iSync for the Symbian60 Phones, and any custom programs that might want to listen to a port.
What it doesn't do is keep your computer invisible to the internet.
A hacker can, more or less easyly find out that you are there, and if he knows how to exploit osx, and you happen to have a slighliy older osx version and so on, you might be endangered.
The main purpose of a real firewall is to make sure that all these exploits that may be present in osx aren't expoitable, because you cannot access the client computer.
So a hacker would need to hack the firewall firsst, then look around who he can access, and then eventually try to hack your computer.
This is especially hard, as the hacker needs to use what is present on the firewall - usually no tools he could use- and go ahead with that.
a real firewall also blocks unkonwn request from inside a private network , thus blocking eventually installed trojan software from becoming dangerous.
the 'firewall that comes with osx is actually a port blocker.
it is as good as any other firewall you can install on your maschine, because it eficently blocks incoming requests to ports that you don't know anything of.
it blocks for example iTunes sharing by default, iSync for the Symbian60 Phones, and any custom programs that might want to listen to a port.
What it doesn't do is keep your computer invisible to the internet.
A hacker can, more or less easyly find out that you are there, and if he knows how to exploit osx, and you happen to have a slighliy older osx version and so on, you might be endangered.
The main purpose of a real firewall is to make sure that all these exploits that may be present in osx aren't expoitable, because you cannot access the client computer.
So a hacker would need to hack the firewall firsst, then look around who he can access, and then eventually try to hack your computer.
This is especially hard, as the hacker needs to use what is present on the firewall - usually no tools he could use- and go ahead with that.
a real firewall also blocks unkonwn request from inside a private network , thus blocking eventually installed trojan software from becoming dangerous.