I just reinstalled McAfee to deal with another problem and am reminded about how annoying the firewall configuration is. This was a major frustration of the community at one point so McAfee just hid it with the Smart Accessoption, which is SMRT if you know what I mean Doh!
Why is Full the default permission instead of Outgoing?
I don't understand why this has to be so hard. First of all why is the default to grant all applications Full access. The list of applications that need to be able to accept inbound connections is so minimal, and rare on the typical users computer, I just can't see the justifcation for it. Yet if smart is disabled, and the popups occur then the default acction on allow is to allow full access. If you want to do anything different you have to spend several minutes digging into the application. Then that is where the real frustration occcurs.
After you dig in you see the massive list of applications that SMRT Access has granted full network access on your computer. McAfee clearly knows nothing about the number one security mantra, the principle of least privilege. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_privilege. So much for them being a security firm. How can our computers ever be secure with every application being granted full access to allow intruders in? With every app given this access it only takes one of them to have a fatal flaw.
And when you see this and realize the problem and decide to resolve it you are faced with a very frustrating reality that the McAfee UI is so clunky and slow that you will not make it through the entire list of applications changing them to Outgoing only. Each time you finish one it starts you back at the top of the list so you have to find your position again. Each one takes several seconds to process and the list is massive. Why cant their be an option to select all and make all Outgoing only, or at least a chunk at a time. Why with the massive screen realestate that the McAfee Total Protection takes up are we limited to viewing a list of two apps at a time, with loads of chunky whitespace around them. Why can't SMRT be Smart?
Smart should very simply have reasonable defaults, outgoing only for all known applications, and then either deny or optionally prompt the user for the appropriate action for the application. The prompts should give detail about what is happenning in the more instead of some boiler plate text. I should be able to very easily see what ports and hosts are being connected too, and what ports are being openned locally. Further their should be another option besides Full, Outgoing and Block, particularly for mobile users, the option of Full access on the Home or trusted networks. This way things like itunes sharing and windows file sharing can be used where safe within the confines of a trusted environment, but not openned up to the assaults in the Hotel or Wifi Hotspot. And this can all be done very similar to what is done today with the same ease of use and lack of confusion. If someone doesn't want to see More information when making the choice they don't have to. The current dialog certainly has room for the three buttons, Full, Outgoing, and Block, and if needed one of the buttons could be changed to a dropdown for the same choices.
All of that would be nice but if nothing else make Outgoing the default permission granted to an application.
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