Bitdefender Firewall Dumps settings & rules

Growler

Hi,

I am using BD2019. I have approximately 20 trusted devices on my network that I would like to network seamlessly. 5 of them are running BD. I constantly find that a random variety of them either can't be seen or can't access one another which makes my network experience a real pain... because it usually happens at the worse possible time. After much investigation (including consultation with BD tech support) we have established that BD firewall is the route cause of all of these problems.



6 months ago... Following consultation with BD support, the only way I could reliably network from my wired  windows 10 desktop to all of my devices was to:

- Stealth mode = OFF

- Network adapters > ethernet = Home/Office

- I then had to manually assign an IP to each device via DHCP in my router

- I then had to manually create a Firewall rule for each IP of EACH DEVICE (all 20) on EACH DEVICE RUNNING BD Firewall (all 5)

To say this was a ridiculous waste of my time is an understatement. I had actually decided to simply disable BD firewall and use Windows Firewall - BUT BD FIREWALL JUST SWITCHES ITSELF BACK ON! (or puts a nag in windows security centre saying my PC is not protected even though it is running Windows Firewall)

It took me a couple of hours to configure everything.

NOW I have just found devices on my network are either not showing up again or being blocked. I have just gone into BD Firewall to discover ALL OF MY CONFIGURED RULES ARE GONE... and settings have reverted back to Stealth = ON and Ethernet = Dynamic. Note: settings reverting to Stealth = ON and Ethernet = Dynamic seems to occur semi-regularly for me... this is the first time all rules have vanished.

 

So my questions are:

- Why has it done this? Why has it dumped all rules and settings? Does it dump all settings and rules when it updates? I have not uninstalled BD or rolled anything back since I did this configuring.

- Is there a config file somewhere I can backup so I quickly re-setup my rules when this happens again next?

- Why can I not create a rule to allow a range of IP addresses through the firewall rather than having to enter each IP manually for each device? This would save a lot of time.

 

P.s. This is an outrageous waste of users time... constantly needing to reconfigure just so I can have a working network. I first changed to BD from Trend after I suffered a Ransomware attack. After the ransomware attack I had my entire desktop formatted and reinstalled from image & backup in less time than I have wasted constantly messing with BD. I am starting to question the value of BD.

Roxana G

Hello Growler,

We are aware of the issue when the Firewall changes itself the settings and we are currently working on a fix. However, regarding the other mentions, we would like to inform you that you can add a rule with an Ip range: 

1.     Bring up the Bitdefender interface and go to Protection 

2.     Click Settings under FIREWALL

3.     In the Rules tab, click on Add rule

4.     In the window at Program path  on the Settings tab, check permission

Now create a new rule and  proceed as above from 1-4 and proceed as below:

 

1.     On the Advanced tab switch ON Custom Remote Address and enter the IP address of the network device in the IP field( You can add /24 at the end of an address such as 192.168.0.0 , in order to have the rule apply for all IPs between 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.0.2554, should be something like: 192.168.0.1/24). To find out the IP please refer to its user manual.

2.     Enter a port number only if you wish to apply the IP exception to a single port, otherwise leave the Port(s) field blank

3.     Click OK to save your custom network exception rule.

 

There is not a file which you can access so that it changes back the settings for Firewall. 

Regarding the notification received from Action Center when Bitdefender Firewall is disabled, this issue is related to Windows itself and not to Bitdefender. As for the fact that it enables itself, please provide us more details?

Thank you!