Other What came first: firewall or firewall package?

[Rastko]

How far into the installation you should setup a packet filter?

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Do I need a packet filter at all? Are there any security implications for not activating a packet filter before you configure network devices to access the internet, or local network (explicitly installed daemons/services excepted)

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General scenario: Desktop/Workstation (hey, these could be top forum categories

 

[zirias@]

Could you elaborate on your question a bit?

 

[zirias@]

Do I need a packet filter at all? Are there any security implications [...]
General scenario: Desktop/Workstation

That's a question you can ultimately only answer yourself. In general, as long as there's no service listening, there's not much a packet filter can do for inbound connections. You might want to filter outbound traffic, but probably not on a desktop. Of course, there's always the risk to catch malware that clandestinely listens on some port -- a packet filter could prohibit this communication you don't want. But then, once you catched some malware, your system is compromised and should be reinstalled cleanly anyways. So, it's a matter of understanding possible threats and deciding yourself.

I personally don't use any packet filtering on desktop machines, but I have them in a local network with the route outside crossing my firewall ...