Re: ZoneAlarm not blocking AVG auto update

on 8/9/2006 4:04 PM Al Smith said the following:
The ZoneAlarm people have always given assurances that even though the icon for ZoneAlarm take a while to show up on the monitor, the firewall itself is running and working immediately to block any Internet traffic to or from your computer.

Well, bullshit. I recently installed AVG. I'm running ZoneAlarm Free 6.1.737. AVG can phone home from my computer at boot-up, and download its anti-virus update *before* ZoneAlarm starts.

There's no doubt about this. I do not have any permissions in ZoneAlarm to allow AVG access, and no warning popped up in ZoneAlarm telling me that AVG wanted to access the Internet.

I disabled the AVG update service, so AVG won't be automatically connecting anymore, but if AVG can do it, so can any other program. Which makes ZoneAlarm more or less worthless.


Which raises the question, can't you control this by changing the load order? Personally, I think I'd rather have my AV software load first so it can take a look at anything else that loads. I use Kaspersky, i can imagine a malware that loads B4 KAV, and hides itself from KAV. But KAV can handle it if you can reverse the order.

Anyone know how to do this and if it is desirable?


Seems to me that the firewall should load first when you have an always-on Internet connection. It's worrying, only because if AVG can load before ZA, probably anything else can also. Major point I wanted to make is that when ZoneAlarm tells you that the firewall loads first, even though the icon may not be up on the screen, they are lying through their teeth.

Oh, I got that. And I see your point about the FW first. Basically I see both AV and FW as basic level services and IMHO the only things that should load before either are the services that are essential to getting the FW and AV to function.

In the specific case of ZA, maybe they aren't "lying" per se, just wrong. Suppose their installer is designed to have the FW load first, and as far as they know, it works. But AVG is designed to do the same thing (since the AVG coders think the order should be AV then FW) and their software "won" the load first battle.

Shouldn't the user be able to control this behavior? Gee, I'm back to my original question. Buhler? . . . Buhler? . . . Anyone? . . . Anyone?

;-)

JH
.

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