4 ms·
One thing I have recently tried out is to prevent all outbound traffic headed towards a port 80. This doesn't necessarily block all HTTP traffic but it blocks a
by johnday 5y ago
One thing I have recently tried out is to prevent all outbound traffic headed towards a port 80. This doesn't necessarily block all HTTP traffic but it blocks any standard http setup.
My expectation was that this would break a lot of the web and a lot of peripheral desktop applications, which I thought would phone home via port 80 to ask for updates and so on. In fact, almost nothing broke at all! So I've kept that turned on. Can recommend doing this if anyone wants peace of mind.
It's very easy to set up with the Windows firewall. Not so sure about other firewalls. (Note the difference between "block outbound traffic on port 80" and "block all traffic destined to port 80 on the remote machine" - I did the latter)
- zamadatix 5y agoI find it astounding you found nothing broken at all completely blocking port 80 when simply setting "always switch" HTTP->HTTPS instead of "when likely supported" has resulted in me noticing daily breakages of misconfigured sites including those linked from HN and that's a step up from simply blocking it. Outside the browser a quick Wireshark capture show even common apps you'd think are HTTPS only like Steam are using HTTP for functionality such as IPv6 connectivity checks and such.
- johnday 5y agoNothing visibly broke - in particular, Steam seems to chug along just fine in the absence of its own checks.