Configure Windows firewall to prevent an application from listening on a specific port

Posted by U-D13 on Super User See other posts from Super User or by U-D13
Published on 2010-03-23T18:58:39Z Indexed on 2010/03/24 22:23 UTC
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The issue: there are many applications struggling to listen on port 80 (Skype, Teamviewer et al.), and to many of them that even is not essential (in the sense that you can have a httpd running and blocking the http port, and the other application won't even squeak about being unable to open the port). What makes things worse, some of the apps are... Well, I suppose, that it's okay that the mentally impaired are being integrated in the society by giving them a job to do, but... Programming requires some intellectual effort, in my humble opinion... What I mean is that there is no way to configure the app not to use specific ports (that's what you get for using proprietary software) - you can either add it to windows firewall exceptions (and succumb to undesired port opening behavior) or not (and risk losing most - if not all - of the functionality).

Technically, it is not impossible for the firewall to deny an application opening an incoming port even if the application is in the exception list. And if this functionality is built into the Windows firewall somewhere, there should be a way to activate it.

So, what I want to know is:

  1. whether there exists such an option,
    and if it does
  2. how to activate it.

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