New plug-in : nsisFirewall

nsisFirewall is a small NSIS plugin that allows you to perform easily 2 tasks :
* Add an application to Windows Firewall exception list
* Remove an application from Windows Firewall exception list

There exist already 2 NSIS plugins that deal with Windows built-in Firewall :
* A big one providing a lot of functionalities : Most of them you will probably never use
* A small one that can only disable/enable the firewall globally : This is a completely insecure idea !!! (nsisFirewall is even smaller than this one)

But what most installers requires is only a simple way to ensure the application about to be installed will be able to access Internet. And in particular :
* You don't want to wonder if this version of Windows has a built-in Firewall : nsisFirewall can be used on all version of Windows and will report gracefully if the action could not be performed
* You don't want to wonder if the built-in Firewall is currently enabled or not : Just register your application. So if the Firewall gets activated, you can still access Internet
* You don't want to disable the Firewall globally, even temporarily : This is insecure ! Do you think the user would be happy with that ?
* You don't need to open a specific port : By registering your application, you give it already full right to access Internet and listen to incoming connection

So check out my nsisFirewall Homepage

Nice! Please make a Wiki page at:


Stu

already done hehe...

(why did the my URL turn into "URL submitted by user")

http://wiz0u.free.fr/prog/nsisFirewall/

It's an anti-spam feature of the forum for newly registered users.

Stu

Excellent, thanks for sharing!

new version

1.1 : Correctly handle 2 errors cases

http://wiz0u.free.fr/prog/nsisFirewall/

Sometimes I get error code 0x80040154 and wonder what this is? Perhaps the firewall isn't running.

According to some Google research, this error code might be returned when MS Firewall is not enabled. So I guess it is safe to ignore this error.

see http://fmepedia.safe.com/articles/Er...ror-0x800706d9
and http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/can...9-t444446.html

Hi!
I need an advice. I'm using this plug-in for my installer, but I got some error reports and now I'm trying to investigate the reason. I saw that when I exclude an application from the Firewall's exception list, it is excluded only for Public networks. But this is not what I really want. I want to exclude it for Home and especially for Domain networks. How can I control this? How this plug-in decides to which type of network must apply the exception?

maybe LiteFirewall Plugin will better suits your needs ?

liteFirewall plug-in is also not a solution for me. From the documentation I see that it recognizes automatically the current profile and makes adds exception to this profile. But I want to add the firewall exception to all profile. So I must have a parameter that selects it.