Enhancing Windows Firewall Security Using Fuzzy Reasoning

Firewall is a standard security utility within the Microsoft Windows operating system. Most Windows users adopt it as the default security option due to its free availability. Moreover, Windows Firewall is a widely used security tool because of the large market share of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be customised for filtering of network traffic based on user-defined inbound and outbound rules. It is supplied with only basic functionality. As a result it cannot be considered as an effective tool for monitoring and analysing of inbound and outbound traffic. Nonetheless, as a freely available and conventional end user security tool, with some enhancement it could perform as a useful security tool for millions of Windows users. Therefore, this paper presents an enhanced Windows Firewall for a more effective monitoring and analysis of network traffic, based upon an intuitive fuzzy reasoning approach. Consequently, it can be used to prevent a greater range of attacks beyond the simple filtering of inbound and outbound network traffic. In this paper, a simulation of ICMP flooding is demonstrated, where the created firewall inbound and outbound rules are insufficient to monitor ICMP flooding. However, the addition of fuzzy reasoning system monitored it successfully and enhanced the standard Windows Firewall functionality to prevent ICMP flooding. The use of this Windows Fuzzy-Firewall can also be extended to prevent TCP flooding, UDP flooding and some other types of denial of service attacks.