Firewalls and passwords

[Wondering]

I have a password on my computer and a firewall. What I want to know is when
it reaches the point where I have to put in a password, is my computer open
to the net or not? The firewall has not loaded at that time, so am I
vulnerable? When does the computer actually become accessible to hackers
when a firewall is not in place?

--

Steven

There are two secrets to success in life
1) Never tell people everything you know

 

[Ron Lowe]

I have a password on my computer and a firewall. What I want to know is
when it reaches the point where I have to put in a password, is my computer
open to the net or not? The firewall has not loaded at that time, so am I
vulnerable? When does the computer actually become accessible to hackers
when a firewall is not in place?

--

Steven

There are two secrets to success in life
1) Never tell people everything you know

Most firewalls run as a service, which means they load at boot time, before
user log-on.

During boot, there may be a brief period of time after TCP/IP loads and
before the firewall loads where the machine is exposed.

This is why XP-SP2 firewall sets up a restrictive boot-time rule set which
is in place the moment TCP/IP loads, and only when everything is fully
loaded does the regular run-time rule set get applied. This protects the
machine during boot.

If you are using a different firewall, you'd need to ask the manufacturer
when and how it loads.

 

[Wondering]

I use zone alarm pro, is there a way to make it so that it uses the same
rules as the sp2 firewall, that you mentioned?

--

Steven

There are two secrets to success in life
1) Never tell people everything you know

 

[Ron Lowe]

I use zone alarm pro, is there a way to make it so that it uses the same
rules as the sp2 firewall, that you mentioned?

Zone Alarm has it's own rules whch you configure.
This is seperate from XP's own firewall.

 

[Wondering]

Yeah, I know it is seperate. I want to know if there is a way to configure
zap to do the same thing, not use the exact same rules from the exact same
program that the sp2 firewall does. If you don't know, please just say so
but reply to people like they are idiots for asking a question.

--

Steven

There are two secrets to success in life
1) Never tell people everything you know

 

[Ron Lowe]

Yeah, I know it is seperate. I want to know if there is a way to configure
zap to do the same thing, not use the exact same rules from the exact same
program that the sp2 firewall does. If you don't know, please just say so
but reply to people like they are idiots for asking a question.

--

I'm not certain what you're asking.
Your initial question was about the whether the firewall was started prior
to user logon, to which the answer is yes.

Your second question was
"I use zone alarm pro, is there a way to make it so that it uses the same
rules as the sp2 firewall, that you mentioned?"

Use the ZA control panel to make whetever settings you wish.
If you want then to be the same rules as the XP-Pro firewall, then do that.

I can't see what's wrong with that answer.
Perhaps the question you wanted to ask was:

"Can I configure ZA behave exactly the same as XP's firewall during
startup".
then the answer is "I don't know", but doubt it.

AFAIK, there is not a seperate boot-time ruleset.
There was not last time I used ZA.

As to whether it needs it, whether ZA has the possibility of an unprotected
few seconds due to when exactly different services load, then the answer is
I don't know. The only people who could answer that would be ZoneLabs.

 

[Wondering]

Well, thanks anyway.

--

Steven

There are two secrets to success in life
1) Never tell people everything you know