Re: XP's Firewall

Kerry Brown AKA kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*a*m in
microsoft.public.security.virus on 8/23/2006,after much thought,came up
with this jewel:

Dan wrote:
<snip>

The following is an example of what Zone Alarm Professional blocked
recently:


The cheapest NAT router you can buy would have effectively blocked
the scans you referenced. Windows Firewall would certainly have
blocked them. ZoneAlarm has better reporting and is more configurable
than the Windows firewall. It is no better or no worse at stopping
unwanted incoming traffic. The fact that it is more configurable is
it's main advantage and also it's main disadvantage. In expert hands
you can analyse attacks and try to contact someone who can stop them.
This is usually a waste of time but it can be done. It is also easier
to configure different levels of protection for different networks,
i.e. a laptop. It is also very easy to misconfigure it and have
little or no protection. Outbound protection is of very little use to
most people. Once something is in your computer it can do what it
wants including turning off the firewall. Current versions of
ZoneAlarm make this hard to do but the malware programmers are
usually only weeks behind in coming up with new hacks. For the
average user Windows Firewall is best because it has very few options
to configure and is silent for the most part. For the expert user
ZoneAlarm may be better because it is more configurable. Personally I
use a NAT router and the Windows Firewall. I consider myself an
expert user (others may have different opinions). The reason I don't
use ZoneAlarm is because it's just one more program running that will
eventually be incompatible with something else I'm running. I see no
need for any better protection than that provided by the Windows
Firewall.

I use a NAT router also(with built-in firewall).Why do you use XP's
firewall? Isn't that just a waste of resources?
max
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