Purpose of inside_access_in permit ip any any

Question

Hi All,
Reviewing some firewalls from a company acquisition and moving to standardize configs with the existing firewalls.  I see they've configured the following, and I fail to see it's purpose and hoping someone can provide some insight.
These are 5505's:
access-list inside_access_in extended permit icmp any any
access-list inside_access_in extended permit ip any any
access-group inside_access_in in interface inside
Don't understand the purpose of this. The inside interface is security 100, and the outside is security 0.  Aren't these flows allowed by default?  I get that you can specify inside_access_in when you want to limit what can go outside, but in the can of "any any" above, I don't see the point.
access-list outside_access_in extended permit icmp any any
access-group outside_access_in in interface outside
Same thing here ---> It's my understanding that ICMP, HTTPS & SSH all occur before the firewall function comes into play on a 5505, so isn't this ACL also moot?

Answer 1

I've sometimes seen the "inside_access_in" case used to trigger logging or hits against the access-list for a very basic connection accounting function. Beyond that though, it's a pretty superfluous command.
I could speculate that some inexperienced admin put it in just to satisfy any doubt he/she may have had when asked "are you SURE the firewall isn't blocking my traffic?" (although it may still have been if there was an inspection rule being hit :-p )
The outside one would allow pinging initiated from the outside of internal hosts that are externally addressable. (Although if that's the only entry in the ACL it would prevent all other outside-initiated traffic.)