Ever since I upgraded to NIS 2011 v. 18.5.0.125, I've noticed that my Firewall history reports that I'm connected to a protected network 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 on network adapter "Software Loopback Interface 1" (IP address 27.0.0.1). If I click on the details, NIS reports that my computer is protected from the local network, and asks me if I want to trust or restrict this network. If I view the contents of the Hosts file (located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc) it contains the following 2 entries:
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
I'm also seeing a "Default Block EPMAP" rule in my firewall security history about a block of my local network adapter (port dcom 135) that I never noticed before, but I've also been setting all sorts of IE security settings and Windows service back to their defaults lately in an atttempt to fix a recent problem I've had downloading updates from the Microsoft Update web site.
Does anyone know what Windows service would create this local network 127.0.0.0 (e.g., Server, Workstation, WebClient, etc.), and whether it's safe to allow my Smart Firewall to trust this network? My laptop is not connected to a LAN and I connect to the Internet on either a dial-up conection at home or a public WiFi connection.
Please note that I still can't connect to to Microsoft Update server if I reset or temporarily disable the NIS Smart Firewall, so I don't believe it's a firewall setting that's actually preventing me from downloading updates from this site. I've already contacted Microsoft Support for help with this issue.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 (32-bit) * IE 8 * NIS 2011 v. 18.5.0.125 * NU v. 14.5.0.120
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8