Is there any way to fully disable Windows Defender Firewall?
Even though CIS is running, I still had to open a port in Windows Defender Firewall for the sshd service to accept connections.
I also have occasionally gotten popup warnings from Windows Defender Firewall when I installed some network-related utilities.
It warned that some of the ports they were using were being blocked and I had to confirm that they should be allowed.
Background:
I’m running CIS v12.2.2.7098 under Windows 10 21H1 with up-to-date patches.
Stealth ports are not enabled in CIS.
The current CIS network is “Home-1”.
All connections from Home-1 addresses are allowed.
Windows Security setting, Firewall & network protection, Private network claims the “private network” is connected and also claims
“Microsoft Defender Firewall is not active because you are using other providers.”
However, when I installed an sshd service, port 22 was not visible to any other computers on my home network.
When run on another computer, ssh did not work and the port scanner nmap listed a half dozen open ports but did not detect port 22.
When run on the compute running sshd, however, nmap did see port 22, and ssh worked.
After I ran a powershell command which is documented to open port 22 in Windows Defender Firewall, the ssh daemon started working.
nmap (on other computers) now shows that port 22 is open and ssh from other computers works.
Edited to add:
the Settings page for Windows Security “Manage Providers” does claim that Windows Firewall is on.
It does not say “Windows Defender Firewall.” I don’t know if that might be a typo, though.
Edited to add on 10 Aug 2021:
Today CIS automatically updated to v 12.2.2.8012 and the computer was rebooted.
The Settings page still says that Windows Firewall is on.