Listing Windows Firewall Rules Using Microsoft PowerShell

Carl Webster — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:00:38 +0000

At a customer site recently, I needed a way to list all the Enabled Windows Firewall Inbound Rules. I could not get what I needed by using the Windows

netsh advfirewall monitor show firewall rule name=all dir=in

command so I turned to using PowerShell.

I found the following article by James O’Neill that helped me get started.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/jamesone/archive/2009/02/18/how-to-manage-the-windows-firewall-settings-with-powershell.aspx

What I needed for a headstart was the following code from James’ article:

Function Get-FireWallRule
{Param ($Name, $Direction, $Enabled, $Protocol, $profile, $action, $grouping)
$Rules=(New-object –comObject HNetCfg.FwPolicy2).rules
If ($name)      {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.name     -like $name}}
If ($direction) {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.direction  -eq $direction}}
If ($Enabled)   {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.Enabled    -eq $Enabled}}
If ($protocol)  {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.protocol   -eq $protocol}}
If ($profile)   {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.Profiles -bAND $profile}}
If ($Action)    {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.Action     -eq $Action}}
If ($Grouping)  {$rules= $rules | where-object {$_.Grouping -like $Grouping}}
$rules}

Get-firewallRule -enabled $true | sort direction,applicationName,name |
format-table -wrap -autosize -property Name, @{Label=”Action”; expression={$Fwaction[$_.action]}},
@{label="Direction";expression={ $fwdirection[$_.direction]}},
@{Label="Protocol"; expression={$FwProtocols[$_.protocol]}} , localPorts,applicationname

I created a script named listfw.ps1 and when I ran the script, I received the output shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

The last column wasn’t formatted properly for me so I thought maybe the “–wrap” parameter of Format-Table was causing the issue. So I removed the “-wrap” and reran the script. I received the output shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

OK, still not what I need. So I thought maybe the “-autosize” was the culprit. I removed the “-autosize” and reran the script. I received the output shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

OK, I am getting further away from what I really. What I want is a way for the Name column and the ApplicationName column to be full width.

Using get-help format-table –full gave me a clue. The “-property” parameter has some options available:

-- Name (or Label) 
-- Expression  or

windows firewall rules – Carl Webster

Listing Windows Firewall Rules Using Microsoft PowerShell