Re: ZoneAlarm not blocking AVG auto update

Al Smith wrote:

The only way you could be sure is to sniff the wire and examine traffic
directly. If an actual connection is being made to AVG before ZA loads
then there's a real problem as far as I'm concerned. Your firewall
rules should load and be applied BEFORE networking services/interfaces
are even started or activated. It shouldn't even be possible to make a
connection without being subject to those rules, or ZA or Windoze is
severely broken. :(


Before I got a splash screen telling me the download of the update
was complete, I'd get a splash screen showing the progress of the
download. It was very quick, only a second or so. I've got a

This suggests, to me anyway, that the download had already been
performed. It's typical behavior when a file is re-downloaded using a
protocol that allows resuming of aborted downloads like FTP. Transfer
speeds will always show ridiculously fast throughput and progress bars
will blaze by because the file is already there.

This sounds more and more like something went awry with a data file
update or the like, AVG is trying to complete it and finds the update
file already stored locally.

fairly fast connection.

I have the fastest my ISP allows short of a commercial account. If I do
something silly like test my connection speed by trying to download a
test file that already exists I can download a 100 Meg file in a half
an eye blink or so. ;-)

The AVG update was downloading and
installing itself before the ZoneAlarm icon came up. And obvious,

I highly doubt it. I firmly believe there's some other cause for what
you're seeing. If you sucessfully delete the downloaded update data and
retry I'd bet dollars to doughnuts things would look a lot different.
Most likely AVG would "stall" until ZA loads. Maybe an error, but I
doubt it. Timeouts are generally set insanely high for such things due
to server loads.

before ZoneAlarm started to work, since there was no permission
given for the AVG update.

Anyway, I've moved on. I can't be bothered trying to fight with
ZoneAlarm to get it to do what it should be doing in the first

Doesn't break my heart at all. I've been a long time opponent of ZA.
Mostly from the experience I acquired trying to work past or through
it's peculiar way of trying to get its fingers into everything. Which is
one of the reasons I say you're mistaken about what's happening. I
know from uncounted exposures to the beast that it's not going to let
something like this get by.

place. I'm not going to send in an e-mail to the ZoneAlarm people
-- they know damned well what their software does, and how it
behaves at boot.

The main reason I wrote here is to advise anyone else using
ZoneAlarm that it is insecure. Forget about what it tells you at

I have a bit of a problem with that because I believe it's incorrect
advice. Again, the only way to be absolutely positive ZA is mishandling
it's own loading and such is to sniff the wire and verify that a
download is actually taking place. Everything you've said here
contradicts that assertion.

Shields Up or on the Sygate firewall test site -- it leaves your
computer wide open for twenty seconds (or whatever -- probably
varies from computer to computer) every time you boot up. That is
dangerous. It is enough time for a trojan to phone home and
download an update or other malicious code.

So unlikely it borders on the impossible. I can't totally discount the
possibility that a reputable software vendor would make such an obvious
blunder, but I find the odds against it staggering. I'm convinced
you're making false accusations based on conclusions you've drawn with
only cursory observations and no real research or credible evidence.
Even though I don't care for ZA personally I think it's wrong to do
that. :(

.

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