Security in the 20-teens

However, for all relatively sane protocols, there is checking that can be done that doesn't require as much code (and therefor doesn't have the risk) of the application code that will be processing the request. Properly done the code for the firewall is relatively static and can be well tested. It doesn't need to change every time you add a new function to the application (or change it's behavior), it only needs to be able to be configured to do different checking.

Usually this can be things like (in order of increased complexity)

checking that the message is well formed by the definition of the protocol

checking that the message follows the protocol syntax

checking that specific fields in the message are in a whitelist

Yes Wireshark has a horrible track record in security, but this sort of checking is happening in many firewalls (under names like 'deep packet inspection') for some protocols. There are also seperate 'Application Firewall' products you can get for some protocols. The better IDS/IPS systems do this sort of thing (as opposed to mearly blacklisting known exploits)