Can I get the firewall's status by c# code?

Question

Can I get the firewall's status by c# code? I want to inform the user when his firewall blocked

Answer 1

You can use the following links to interact with Windows firewall. Include NetFwTypeLib as a reference to your project.

For Window Firewall you can create the manager with the following code:

Type NetFwMgrType = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("HNetCfg.FwMgr", false);

INetFwMgr manager= (INetFwMgr)Activator.CreateInstance(NetFwMgrType);

from there you can read about the various methods to configure with windows firewall.

Windows Firewall (Windows XP...limited Vista and 7 support) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366452(v=VS.85).aspx

Windows Firewall with advanced security (Windows Vista/7)

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366459(v=VS.85).aspx

Answer 2

You can to it via WMI, as any firewall has to report trough WMI its status (it is the way the Security Center shows status).

There's very little information in Internet, these may be starting points:

http://www.mombu.com/microsoft/windows-xp-wmi/t-remotely-get-wmi-info-from-security-center-601256.html

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms950397.aspx

The next step is to access WMI classes in C#:

http://www.csharphelp.com/2006/10/wmi-made-easy-for-c/

http://geekswithblogs.net/PsychoCoder/archive/2008/01/25/using_wmi_in_csharp.aspx

...and many others, just google "C# WMI".