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I have filezilla already installed on my machine. I have no recollection of what permissions / triggers of windows firewall it needed back when I installed it.

Today, I wanted to learn how to create a script to automate ftp tasks. I know nothing about this topic, and went through a tutorial learning how to use ftp on the commandline first (interactively, windows command prompt). Some point after connecting, typical win7 prompt for needs admin to proceed or whatever box pops up, I shrug, allow connection for 'private networks'.

Much later on, I'm reading about how ftp (the thing I just did) is insecure, sends passwords in plaintext etc. Crap. So now I'm worried about what I enabled? I dig around, find windows firewall > Monitoring, find 2 identical entries:

File Transfer Program Private Allow No Inbound blahblah ANY UDP ANY ANY File Transfer Program Private Allow No Inbound blahblah ANY TCP ANY ANY

  1. Are these because of my interactive ftp session, or are they normal (e.g. created by filezilla)?
  2. Why are they so permissive (ANY ANY ANY...) or is that normal? If not:
  3. How do I delete these rules? Will Filezilla still keep working?

Sorry for the heady mix of paranoia, miscomprehension and newbieness.

yen
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1 Answers1

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The rules should be restricted to ftp.exe, aren't they? So it's no "so permissive".

ftp.exe allows only active FTP mode. Active FTP mode can use any local ephemeral port number. That's why the rule is "so permissive" otherwise. You better use a passive FTP mode, which does not require any opened local port. But for that you need to use a 3rd party FTP client.

If you do not want to use ftp.exe anymore, you can delete the rules.

  • Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Defender Firewall > Advanced settings > Inbound Rules
  • Locate your "File Transfer Program" rules
  • Click Delete in Actions panel.
Martin Prikryl
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  • I see... yes you are right. Thy are restricte to 'ftp.exe'. So that answers Q #1: I must have created those rules because of my interactive ftp session. So next - Q3: How do I delete these rules in win7 firewall?. I clicked 'help', ended up here: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/a3742e3c-485c-4f05-841f-abf90568420e.aspx even the word 'delete' does not exist on this page. Hrmm... – yen Dec 11 '17 at 07:08