[Python-Dev] IDLE - firewall warning

[Nick Coghlan]

Gregor Lingl wrote:
> I have posted the following message to idle-dev,
> but no reply yet. Just a suggestion:
> 
> The firewall warning message in the Pythonshell window
> was introduced  in Python 2.3 (IDLE 1.0 or something similar?)
> 
> I remember well the problems, to which it was the answer. 
> (If I remember correctly I was involved in the discussion 
> thread which led to the introduction of that message.)
> 
> Since more than three years I've used IDLE on many different
> systems and I didn't encounter a single Firewall warning since
> then. (It seems that firewalls nowadays are not offended by
> the use of 127.0.0.1)

Unless that firewall is ZoneAlarm on Windows XP :)

Something that can easily happen to suppress the firewall warnings for IDLE is 
that someone runs a Python application and grants it access to the internet. 
For an executable file signature based outbound firewall like ZoneAlarm, this 
actually grants passage through the firewall to *all* Python applications, 
since it is the interpreter binary that gets registered (ZA has a similar lack 
of granularity when it comes to Java applications).

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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