Re: Win xp sp2 firewall

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:39:57 +0000, B. Nice wrote:

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 08:39:00 -0500, Leythos <Void@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm glad it seems we agree on all of those points, it's actually nice to
chat with someone that's not off-kilter.

We don't agree that much, I'm afraid. We heavily disagree on what is
the proper approach.

I advocate encouraging people to run as restricted users and mail-bomb
the vendors of products that fail to work like that for no good
reason. And if that does'nt help - switch to something that works.

Well, I agree that we should teach, but MB is a violation of most TOS for
people.

The problem that we have is that none of those things are happening, and
few of us can reach the masses that are impacted daily by ignorance and by
malware.

Well, since you seem to prefer to deal with the symptom instead of the
problem, I don't see how you are actually interrested in changing it.

I am, but I'm not willing to wait for the world to change, I want to
protect people right now.

So, as a general rule, while we can't educate the masses in time to
protect them or us from them.

No excuse.

Not an excuse, but it is a reality - do you just let them keep consuming
bandwidth, getting private info exposed, probing others systems,
complaining about their systems running slow, while doing nothing
productive. You can educate and also prevent at the same time.

My experience has been that if I suggest ZA/ZAP, that the users tend to
fall into two groups - those that don't have a clue and never will and
those that start learning and actually question every little pop-up.

The problem being that you suggest ZA/ZAP in the first place.

But I've not been show how it's a problem, sure there have been people
claiming it has a root kit, that it's not teaching anyone anything, that
it can be subverted, but it works better than XP SP2 firewall and
certainly better than nothing at all, in most cases.

Those running XP SP2 firewall never question anything as they are almost never
asked about anything, never see what is happening, never know about the
holes already in their firewall.

It seems you did'nt teach them much about what running a program as an
administrator means and also not about how networking works, how to
monitor it and why that is important.

No, they never contacted me before the problem. That's where you are
missing it - from the start they don't have much of a chance, unless they
get something better then SP2 firewall.

I never leave a compromised user or a friend without telling them about
security at all levels. You can't reach people you've not been too or that
don't know to see out information.

So, it boils down to the user continuing to use XP SP2 firewall and being
compromised due to the OS defaults and ignorance, or their being asked to
install some third party PFW that provides at least a little more
protection, provides a chance for them to become motivated, a chance to
keep them protected.

In every case where I've visited a person using just the XP firewall, they
were compromised unless they also had a NAT/Firewall appliance.

That's definately not my experience.

In all but one case where I've visited people using ZA/ZAP or other PFW
(not Windows XP SP2 FW), they've all been uncompromised and that includes
the people with several computers and no NAT router.

I question that. Simply because I have seen many users with lots of
crap on their machines despite of running a PFW, anti-virus and other
anti-stuff.

And one final question: Why even encourage people to allow malware to
run making them believe that it's controllable. I think it's a more
honest approach to tell them that if they allow malware to run, all
bets are off.

I don't encourage people to allow malware to run, not at all.

Since running a PFW has already been proven to "HELP" protect people from
all sorts of malware and other attacks, why are you and VB/SG so against
something that's already proven to work better than XP SP2 Firewall.

That's the real question in this thread - since ZA/ZAP works better than
XP SP2 firewall, why are you against using it?


--
Leythos
spam999free@xxxxxxxxxx (remove 999 for proper email address)
.

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