FirewallForge

WPF GUI suite for Windows Firewall rule management plus a headless deployment wrapper. The suite includes a live manager for your system firewall, an offline editor for safe rule manipulation on backup files, and a CLI wrapper for managed deployments.

Tools

FirewallManager.ps1

Live firewall rule management:

• Browse all rules in a searchable DataGrid with Group column
• Inline editing (enabled, action, profile, protocol, ports)
• Backup rules to .fwbackup files (netsh export wrapped in JSON with metadata)
• Restore from backup
• Delete rules (multi-select)
• Export to CSV
• Filter by name, program, port, description
• Filter by Group via dropdown
• Find Duplicates - scans rules for matching program + direction + action + ports, shows report and filters grid
• Quick Block menu - one-click blocking for programs (file browser), ports (text input), or IP addresses (text input)
• Collapsible Stats Panel - total/inbound/outbound, enabled/disabled, allow/block, by profile counts
• Search Highlighting - bold + colored rows when search filter is active
• DNS Correlation - correlate recent blocked connections with Windows DNS Client event 3008 queries

FirewallRulesEditor.ps1

Offline backup editor:

• Import .fwbackup files created by FirewallManager
• Browse, edit, and delete rules without touching your live firewall
• Export modified rulesets back to .fwbackup or CSV
• Merge Import - import a second backup and merge new rules into the current set (deduplicates by name)
• Show Changes - diff view comparing current state to the original import (added, deleted, modified rules)
• Fleet Compare - compare two or more endpoint backups and report consistent, drifted, and missing rules
• Rule count in title bar - always shows current rule count
• Safe sandbox for planning firewall changes

FirewallForge.ps1

Headless deployment wrapper for Intune, Task Scheduler, and other managed rollout tools:

• Validate a declarative JSON profile without administrator privileges
• Create or update named firewall rules idempotently
• Optionally prune rules from the profile's managed group

Profiles use the fwprofile.schema.json format. A minimal profile looks like:

{
"Version": 1,
"Name": "Workstation baseline",
"Group": "FirewallForge:Workstation",
"Rules": [
{
"Name": "FirewallForge-Allow-DNS",
"DisplayName": "FirewallForge - Allow DNS",
"Direction": "Outbound",
"Action": "Allow",
"Protocol": "UDP",
"RemotePort": "53",
"Service": "Dnscache"
}
]
}

Usage

# Live firewall management (requires Administrator)
.\FirewallManager.ps1
# Offline backup editing (no admin needed)
.\FirewallRulesEditor.ps1
# Validate a deployment profile (no admin needed)
.\FirewallForge.ps1 validate .\profile.json
# Apply a profile (requires Administrator); -Prune removes stale rules in its group
.\FirewallForge.ps1 apply .\profile.json -Prune

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• PowerShell 5.1+
• Administrator privileges (FirewallManager and FirewallForge.ps1 apply)