97084 - ZoneAlarm reports that mozilla.exe is acting as a server

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 100154

(Core :: Networking, defect)

Description

[Jeffrey Yasskin]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010807
BuildID:    2001080716

When I load mozilla.exe, ZoneAlarm warns me that Mozilla is requesting server
access.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install ZoneAlarm Firewall
2. Run Mozilla

Actual Results:  ZoneAlarm pops up a window that says Do you want to allow
Mozilla to act as a server?
This program is asking for server rights!

Expected Results:  Mozilla should not require server rights. It's only a web
browser.

I don't see why a web browser needs server access. It should only need browser
access. (Which it also asked for, and I granted)

Comment 1

[Mike Young]

I can confirm this on Win98. I asked once on IRC, and someone said that mozilla
was probably just opening up weird ports. Ive always restricted "Server Rights"
and Mozilla has worked fine.

Has occurred for as long as I can remember. (That would be April 2000)

Comment 2

[timeless]

*** Bug 108779 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[benc]

+qawanted - anyone know what these dialogs really mean?

Comment 4

[Mike Young]

Attachment: Help File from Zone Alarm describing "Server Rights"

I've attached a copy of the file detailing "Server Rights" from the Zone Alarm
help file. Its not really very helpful.

Essentially, it appears as if Mozilla is opening ports for receiving data on
startup. However, Zone Alarm does NOT report Mozilla acting as a server at any
point in time after startup. 

I remember hearing at one point in time that Mozilla tries to connect to
127.0.0.1 at startup, which might be construed by Zone Alarm as being a server
(connecting to itself) but thats iffy. 

NN4, IE, and Opera do not request server rights, so I presume Mozilla is doing
weird stuff with TCP when it first starts up... perhaps someone could get a TCP
log and we can see what exactly is happening.

Comment 5

[neeti]

cc'ing darin

Comment 6

[Darin Fisher]

yes, we need a packet trace.  www.ethereal.com is a good tool for capturing
network data on win2k.  can someone please generate a packet trace?  thx!

Comment 7

[Luke Koleszar]

I don't think Ethereal will capture loopback traffic.  (At least it didn't when
I just tried it on WinME.)  However with tiny personal firewall I see that
Mozilla has an open TCP port bound to the loopback address 127.0.0.1:4540 and
has connected to itself from port 127.0.0.1:4541. (port numbers are based on my
current run) 
The number of bytes transfered is aproximately equal 2 bytes for each HTTP
connection made.  For example if I go to google.com, tiny firewall says that 4
bytes have been transfered.  2 for page + 2 for image.

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

dupe of bug 100154 ?

Comment 9

[Mike Young]

hmmmm.... This bug is older, and has more recent discussion, but bug 100154 has
details about the investigation into this issue. Decisions, Decisions... I'm
going to mark this bug as dup of bug 100154, but I think that the fact that
Firewalls are throwing up alerts about this behavior is alot more important that
just the fact that the ports are opened.... So I would request that neeti and
Darin take another look at just how "trivial" bug 100154 really is...

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 100154 ***

Comment 10

[:deanis74]

v

Comment 11

[cls]

*** Bug 153020 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***