Testing Your Firewall

I’ve touched on firewalls in a slew of articles. I’ve recommended getting a firewall, either hardware-based or software-based, to protect your data, specially when you’re accessing the Internet. If you’ve followed my advice, you’ve probably set up your own firewall by now. What I haven’t tackled is how you would ensure that your firewall is really working, that it’s doing the job it’s supposed to do, which is to keep intruders away from your network. This article will teach you how to do that.

There are at least two ways to test a firewall. First is running it through leak tests, which, as defined in matousec.com, are “small, non-destructive programs” designed to bypass, or at least attempt to bypass, a firewall’s security measures. These programs use several techniques in their attempt to circumvent firewall security. As we’re not really concerned about these techniques, we won’t name them here. Instead, you may want to look them up on the Internet. In particular, you can find descriptions of these techniques and the leak tests that use them at firewallleaktester.com. There are other websites that give details on these programs, but this is the most complete one I’ve seen so far.

The second way to test a firewall is to scan your PC (with a firewall installed, of course) using any one of the various online tests available on the web. If you google the term “firewall testing,” you’ll see many of the results are actually websites that offer vulnerability testing of your PC (and thus your firewall). A partial list of websites with online “leak tests” is given below:

• Steve Gibson’s Shields Up! - This is the most well-known of the sites.
• McAfee’s Hackerwatch
• AuditMyPC.
• PCFlank.com.

Like their leak test counterparts, in my opinion, these websites are equally as effective in testing your firewall for vulnerabilities.

So, after installing your firewall, be sure to test it using any of the methods outlined in the URLs given above. It would, in fact, be better if you run your firewall through a combination of the methods. If you really want to be sure that you’re firewall is 100% leakproof, I’d even recommend running them through all the tests. It’s better to err on the side of caution, you know.

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