Firewall management

Question

I have just installed Sophos on Snow Leopard. Before having any anti-virus software installed, I had the native Mac OS firewall enabled under System Preferences. After installing Sophos, should I disable the built-in Mac firewall ? Thanks.

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brvx · Accepted Answer

No harm, although it may just steal some CPU cycles and slow things down imperceptibly, depending on the speed of the processor to begin with. FYI: Verizon's FiOS router, the Actiontec MI424WR has a remote access backdoor on port 4576, with no way to disable it. It's hard coded into the firmware. It's why I stopped using it almost as soon as I started. Best routers are those which can use Tomato or DD-WRT firmware, which allow a lot of latitude, safety and customization, often on relatively inexpensive routers. Verizon keeping the firewall turned off by default sounds pretty scummy. Another thing I discovered was that on my Verizon home page (they are my ISP) the default wireless WPA2 password (the one on the router label itself) is clearly shown. So, anyone happening to guess my PW or hack my Verizon account would be able to see that. Of course, the first thing I did on that router was to set a unique shared key password, so that really didn't matter. However, a Verizon rep told me that eventually the actual PW would appear. I think he was talking through his hat, since this never happened. VZ told me that they do this for "user convenience," so when someone calls in for support they can find it right away. Really unbelievable. Like someone wouldn't be able to just lift up the router and look at the label. Oh, and you should always change the router admin PW to something unique. On many routers it will simply be "password." :1016445