Tiger Firewall?

[wdschrank]

I'm new to the mac world. Does tiger come with a firewall and if so how do I turn it on and off? I surf wirelessly with airport express and want to make sure I'm ok. Perhaps it's enough to have my network password protected and closed?

 

[andrewfee]

I'm new to the mac world. Does tiger come with a firewall and if so how do I turn it on and off? I surf wirelessly with airport express and want to make sure I'm ok. Perhaps it's enough to have my network password protected and closed?

Open up System Preferences and go to Sharing. There's a Firewall tab there, and you can turn it on and add exceptions etc.

You don't really need to bother with it on OSX though, but I suppose it can't hurt.

 

[Mydriasis]

check out your system preference...sharing...firewall. If you only let computers with a predefined mac address connect to your network you should be fine. Some people also like to encode the WLAN, but thats up to you. (you can use your AirportAdmin tool for all of that.

 

[mkrishnan]

You don't really need to bother with it on OSX though, but I suppose it can't hurt.

I'm going to go out on a limb with this one. I think that, unlike antivirus software, you *do* pretty much need firewall on a mac almost as much as you need it on a PC. Firewalls protect you from all kinds of invasive attacks that can be launched on any kind of system.

FWIW, though, you have a hardware firewall in the Airport Express, which is on by default and which blocks all ports, AFAIK. So you are really only vulnerable to someone who has already hacked into your wireless network. But still, it's good to use the software firewall. And the one in Tiger is very nice -- it includes stealth mode.

 

[wdschrank]

Thanks for the quick responses. Anytime I'm told I don't need to spend more money on something because I already have it, I smile. Funny how that works.