Firewall+What+is+it

Firewall What is it

First may I say that this definition of a firewall is Not a complete description but it is meant to provide a basic explanation of the term.

A basic definition of a firewall is either a software program or hardware device you can use when connected to a network, and it’s function is mainly to help prevent your machine from getting attacked by the sick of this world.

Attacks usually occur when an application you are running, or the operating system itself, is vulnerable to problems.

Below are two examples of the types of vulnerabilities that can occur:‐

Your multimedia player cannot handle a specially‐crafted audio or video file.

When it tries to play the file, the multimedia player may crash, or worse, malicious instructions can be embedded in the file that when read, cause all sorts of problems, including opening a ʹback doorʹ on your computer.

These programs, sometimes called Remote Access Trojans (RAT) or Backdoor Software (named as the software opens a ʺback doorʺ on your computer in which it can tell your machine what to do), are sometimes attached to Trojan Horses, viruses, worms, and Spyware exploits.

If your system is infected, there is virtually no limit to what these programs can do

Your operating system, when sent enough requests from a malicious computer on the Internet, could either slow down to a crawl or crash.

This is called a denial‐of‐service attack.

A DoS (Denial of Service) attack, is an attack whereby one computer

or a group of loosely networked computers attempt to send too much information to a remote computer or server, such as a web

server.

A DoS floods the remote computer with so much traffic that it cannot handle normal functions.

Although operating systems and applications are updated to protect against known vulnerabilities, software designers are not perfect and it is only a matter of time before malicious people find and exploit problems.

Firewalls can literally ʹClose Upʹ known and potential holes on your computer.

This helps prevent vulnerabilities, even as‐of‐yet unknown ones, from being exploited.

Firewalls mainly perform this task in two ways:‐

An ʹInbound Firewallʹ filters data from an outside network,

hopefully preventing all but legitimate information from being sent to your computer.

An ʹOutbound Firewallʹ performs the opposite type of filtering.

It helps prevent a computer that has been attacked from sending certain types of information to the outside world, announcing that the computer is vulnerable.

The best firewalls do both, to help protect your machine.

Firewalls are not perfect and they alone cannot stop your computer from falling victim to malicious activity, but they can greatly lower the chances.

Incidentally, the term ʺFirewallʺ comes from the term ʺ Fire Wall ʺ.

A wall built inside houses, apartments, or other structures that help prevent fires from spreading from one room to another.

Likewise, a computer ʺFirewallʺ helps prevent problems on the Internet from spilling onto your computer.