Re: Recommend a free firewall or stick with xp?

From: Siddhartha Jain (losttoy_at_gmail.com)
Date: 03/11/05 

Date: 11 Mar 2005 06:43:04 -0800

Gerald Vogt wrote:
> Siddhartha Jain wrote:
> > I would recommend a third-party firewall, commercial or free is
your
> > choice. The reason isn't Microsoft's notorious security track
record or
> > their inability to fix bugs quickly but that by using a third-party
> > firewall you'll spread your risk between two vendors. So if MS
goofs up
> > on some XP bug or patch you still have a third-party firewall that
> > isn't afflicted with M$'s goofup and vice-versa.
>
> The problem is that you hardly find any third-party firewalls (except

> hardware ones) that actually only do firewalling. All "normal" PFWs
have
> tons of other dubios features that promise so much and still don't
> really work properly if it gets critical or someone smart comes
along.
> And what good is a PFW that you can sometimes easily knock off? (Just

> think that a crash because of some outbound filtering can turn off
the
> whole firewall) PFWs are huge giants and there is much to do wrong
and
> to mess up. So I think a hardware firewall is preferable to XP's
> firewall which is preferable to a PFW in respect to proper and safe
> firewalling.

I haven't tried a lot of PFWs but Zonealarm seems to work just fine on
my Win2K Pro installation. Hasn't ever crashed or turned itself off
after a Win2k crash (which in itself has been rare) and I have tried
*invading* my laptop from my linux box with a bunch of utilities but
zonealarm does the job well.

Ofcourse, there could be zero day vulnerabilities in ZA that I might
not know of.

- Siddhartha

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Can I protect myself against network attacks?
    ... > can peacefully coexist with a PFW. ... > because there are effects from the attack; ... after it disabled the firewall. ... listening and the IP stack would just drop packets for any port. ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: Can I protect myself against network attacks?
    ... I consider the SP2 PFW "half a firewall", and many I've read say it ... or listening in, and no virus or trojans from a system scan via KAV. ... After all, the attacks did ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: Why you should use a firewall on Win98
    ... > filtering firewall or indeed any firewall, ... If you like the outbound firewall you can use it. ... With a PFW it's all there and nobody ... message the warning that there is a phising e-mail in my Trashbin once ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: Use XP Firewall with Router & Firewall?
    ... > easily cut off all internet access, ... > the XP firewall to block outbound traffic is zero-it doesn't attempt it. ... there are better tools instead of a PFW. ... control get something that controls applications and prevents software ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: Billige Notebooks
    ... Welche Personal Firewall würdest du denn auf einem Windows-PC installieren? ... Mein Internetprovider bietet mir bei meinem Tarif *kostenlos* "Norton ... eine PFW ganz sparen. ... weil sie eben dabei ist. ...
    (de.comp.sys.notebooks)