Blocking MSN on a network

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Does anyone know an effective way to block MSN/Windows live messenger on a company network? I have been trying to do this at work with minimal success. The company has a watchguard Soho 6 firewall which I have blocked port 1836 TCP and UDP incoming and outgoing aswell as numerous other ports I have seemed mentioned associated with MSN. I have also blocked the same ports together with the exe file associated with this program in the windows firewall with group policy. However I have read that MSN will use other ports if it is unable to get through on the standard one. Has anyone got any experience of this or any advice on this subject?

Thanks in advance.

John

 

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Ofcourse I meant port 1863!

 

Remove it, and lock them down with Group Policy so they can't install it. Alternatively, block it off using something like Websense, though it's not cheap.

 

Block access to the hotmail.com domain at the proxy
usually does it

 

yup Group policy, same as they have done here at work, only senior staff and uber admins get it = Me (cos I do nights and have god like status lol)

not sure if blocking hotmail would go down well tho hehe... while at it block yahoo, gmail and all the rest, just remember to park your car as far away as possible (MR popular springs to mind)

 

Meltin,

Sounds like you need to change your firewall filter from "block some, permit the rest" to "permit some, block the rest" system.

 

Agree with RHL

 

Thanks for the advice guys. Both the windows firewall and the watchguard were blocking all incoming ports by default. It was the outgoing ports I was looking to block. By the sound of it Messenger will port hop and will use port 80 if necessary. I was able to stop windows messenger from running using group policy but according to the people who support the Watchguard SOHO 6, it is ineffective at stopping MSN. They were recommending a more advanced hardware firewall.So this has been put forward.

 

Fella

Trying to block MSN Messenger using a firewall is like nailing jelly to a wall. If you really need to block it - and be sure that it can't be accessed via some other means, you'll need to look seriously at a content-filtering solution like SurfControl or WebSense. These programs aren't exactly cheap, but they WILL block anything you want blocked with the minimum of fuss. You can evaluate most of them for 30 days for nowt, so my advice would be to download eval copies of two or three of them, stick them on a virtual machine and run them for a month or so and see if you like them.

Whilst they're certainly not free, the amount of money you could potentially save the legal department in Industrial Tribunal fees is usually enough to get the licensing costs paid for in most organisations!