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How can I configure a Windows 2000/XP/2003 computer to block Ping packets?
Windows 2000/XP/2003 machines have a built-in IP security mechanism called IPSec (IP Security). IPSec is a protocol that’s designed to protect individual TCP/IP packets traveling across your network by using public key encryption. In a nut shell, the source PC encapsulates the normal IP packet inside of an encrypted IPSec packet. This packet then remains encrypted until it arrives at the destination PC.
This is not the place for a more detailed intro to the IPSec features, but know that besides encryption, IPSec will also let you protect and configure your server/workstation with a firewall-like mechanism.
How can you protect your computer with IPSec? Simply by creating a policy element that will tell the computer to block all the specific IP traffic that is configured by those rules.
To block all PING traffic to and from a computer you need to create an IPSec policy that will block all ICMP traffic.
Check to see if the computer responds to PING requests by pinging it:
To configure a single computer follow these steps:
Configuring IP Filter Lists and Filter actions
However you might want to configure a more specific IP Filter for ICMP. For example, lets say you wish to prevent a server from answering all PINGS except for specific PINGs sent by a specific computer used by the Help Desk department. In that case you should add a new IP Filter and use your defined source and Destination IP Addresses, and the ICMP protocol. See Block Web Browsing but Allow Intranet Traffic with IPSec for examples on how to create IP Filters.
Next step is to configure the IPSec Policy and to assign it.
Configuring the IPSec Policy
Again, you can add any combination of IP Filters and Filter Actions you like.
Notice that you cannot change their order like in other full-featured firewalls. Even so, this configuration works perfectly as you will soon discover.
The next phase is to assign the IPSec Policy.
Assigning the IPSec Policy
Done, you can now test the configuration by trying to surf to restricted and unrestricted websites.
Blocking of more than one computer can be done in 2 ways:
Either way, both methods can be used to prevent a number of computers from using ICMP (or for any other IPSec Policy).
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