Re: Is there a risk with firewalls?

Dear Mr. Arnold,

Among the many responses I found your explanation and advice most useful.

It appears that a NAT router is the safest way to protect my or any PC from
intenet intrusions occurring at any time and coming from tine Internet?
True or Flse?

There are some additional questions which remain:
1.) Is a firewall such as Zone Alarm still needed even if one has a NAT
router
stalled? The NAT router prevents access to the PC from any other site
but
the one the PC has been connected to, but it does not prevent a malware
program from contacting a site of its choosing. Is this the reason why
one
still needs a firewall in addition to a NAT router?
2.) Why is the vulnerable period between boot and final activation of a
software
firewall not mentioned and described in the help texts for commercial
soft-
ware firewalls? It appears that Microsoft with Vista has officially
acknowledged
that such a vulnerable period exists. ( I found that out the hard way.)
3.) Finally you say that a firewall needs two network interface cards one
facing
the internet, the other the local network. There are no such interface
cars
on my PC or on most of the PCs using software firewalls such as Zone
Alarm.
I therefore do not follow your explanation.

Thank you

G,R,


"Mr. Arnold" <MR. Arnold@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dr3ei.1622$iz5.1134@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"NoSpam" <NoSpam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:48Tdi.3607$lY5.851@xxxxxxxxxxx
Dear Group,

I am asking a question regarding the time interval after startup of a PC
and
the
time the firewall becomes effective.

The details are briefly as follows:

On my PC the startup contains the following sequence: first the DSL
connect
is
started up, followed by my firewall. There is a gap in time between the
two,
which
is being used to deposit a Trojan onto my system. The Trojan is detected
by
my
Antivirus program and can be removed.

Question: Should a firewall not become effective BEFORE any connection
to
the
internet is opened?? If this is true, are there any firewalls which will
do
just that?


The only personal packet filter or personal FW that can get there before
the
network connection is available is XP's or Vista's personal packet
filter/personal FW, because those solutions a integrated components of the
O/S. No 3rd party solution is an integrated component of the O/S. So,
therefore, the O/S is not making things wait until the PPF/PFW is up and
running, before anything else takes place.

What you need is a border device like a NAT router. It will always be up
and
running, protecting the machine, before the machine can make a connection
to
the Internet.

I saw one of your posts toanother poster about why something like ZA or
any
other desktop solutions are not FW(s).

*What is a FW?*

A FW separates two networks. The network it's protecting from usually the
Internet and the network it's protecting the LAN. A FW must have two or
more
interfaces or (network interface cards for a FW software solution running
on
a gateway computer. One NIC faces the Internet (the untrusted zone) and
the
other NIC faces the LAN (the trusted zone).

A FW solution provides a physical separation of networks whether that be a
packet filtering FW router, a FW appliance or software running on a host
gateway computer.






.

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