Firewalls

ZoneAlarm is a stealth firewall.. that must be taken into consideration. A firewall that closes ports is still vulnerable to allow your computer to be crashed. Stealth tells the scanner that your comp doesn't exist. I have used all 3 firewalls at different times and here are my ratings, in order.

#1 - ZoneAlarm
Reason: It puts all ports not being used into stealth mode, is free, and is easy-to-use.

#2 - Tiny Personal Firewall
Reason: Is a good firewall overall, but does not hide all unused ports in stealth mode. (Only important ones like NetBios and a few others.)

#3 - Black Ice Defender
Reason: The firewall Stealths only the NetBios port (may have changed if an upgrade has been released). It is not free, which is another bad thing about it.

Bottom Line - Any of these firewalls will close ports and give you better protection than none, but for the best protection available, ZoneAlarm wins... :)

I used to run ConsealPC Firewall (from signal 9 which has since been bought by McAfee) in combination with blackice. The thing was that I was running a LAN with a wingate for proxy. I liked to being able to edit my own rulset with conseal (pretty much like ipchains/iptables or ipfilter) but used blackice (firewall part disabled) for its IDS capabilities... I briefly looked at zonealarm, but I found it lacked flexibility for protecting a whole LAN... Between, I don't worry that much about "leakage" as my "users" are intelligent enough not to run unknown programms/attachments...

Anyways, now I'm running OpenBSD with ipfilter for my firewall box... (and when I'll get a bit free time will add snort...)

Ammo

I use Tiny Personal Firewall and had no idea just how popular it was or that so many people would suggest it.

SUBSEVEN I love when people prob my system looking for sub seven come on please that kiddy stuff has got to go.

9 times out of 10 the people looking for sub seven on your system has axidently giving themselves the server side of the virus and now but probing your system they have given you there ip and wow whats that by by access to your system.


True it is fun to play with when my x wife is ever online LOL she is so pissed that her system acting so weard when she is online. where the mouse goooooo woops

I have just finished wrestling with the MagisterB worm (I won eventually) one of the things it does is deactivate Zone Alarm fire walls. The defs for it were published in September it was found in the wild in August.

Hey all,

Thought I'd throw in my two cents worth. There is one more free firewall product that I've been experimenting with and like: http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/ . I like that I can configure it how I need to. They do a nice comparison of their product against many of the products mentioned here: http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/compare.phtml

On another note, I recently purchased a NetGear RP114 Router. What I found interesting, after I had one of my students scan, is its effectiveness at hiding everything behind it. I was impressed. Although I doubt this is the be-all-end-all kind of router and still run my Outpost Firewall even with the router, I was still pleased at it's effectiveness at hiding whatever didn't need to be seen. =)

I tested my copy of Tiny Personal Firewall with grc.com and its "Shields Up" test. I posted a flawless score and my system and its ports are totally stealth. Next I downloaded their "Leaktest" product and found that my firewall indicated when it tried to connect, and gave me the option to deny or approve it. If this isn't enough proof, I don't know what is. Ive heard that the expensive BlackIce Defender couldn't even pass the Leaktest.

Quote:

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#2 - Tiny Personal Firewall
Reason: Is a good firewall overall, but does not hide all unused ports in stealth mode. (Only important ones like NetBios and a few others.)

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This isn't true as seen by my testing.

I've been using Outpost too ...the only thing I didn't like prior to today was the "????" that showed up in the active connection list.
If you're seeing that, theres a new build that'll get rid of it.

Theres a good Trojan detector at
http://tds.diamondcs.com.au/
Its not freeware but you can use it for 30 days.

I still firmly endorse Tiny if it works for you (I'm running a NAT/proxy program that it doesn't work well with, I figure it's a unique case).

Anyway, Tiny for advanced users. For people who want to get into the guts of their ruleset.

Sygate Personal Firewall for people who can't get Tiny to work, but want control.

ZoneAlarm for people with no interest in any sort of firewall management.

BlackIce for people who have money and want a help support line. :D

I have an old version of Conseal I used to use still here... I guess it just fell into disuse at one point. Hm. I didn't like it that much at the time, and I'm not about to mess with it now that everything is running again :)