86 replies to this topic

[arachnoid]

Zonealarm tried to get extra market share by making several versions of the firewall with differnt added features like anti virus but lost their way in the process.Many years ago it was in my opinion one of the better free products but its just lost so much ground against the competition.

[JJ_]

I don't understand why a lot of the so called 'experts' on Neowin seem to be fixated on advising people on using the half baked Windows 7 firewall or not having a firewall at all. By default, the WIndows 7 firewall allows all outbound traffic. You can set it to block outbound traffic but then you will have to manually create a rule for each and every application which you wish to allow access to the internet (talk about tedious). Most annoying of all is that it will not prompt you when a new program wants to establish an outgoing connection.

'Experts' of Neowin, please explain to me how your NAT gateway, your beloved MSE and half baked Windows 7 firewall at default settings will protect against unknown 0-day threats or driveby's from sending out your keystrokes or personal files to the attacker?

[PsYcHoKiLLa]

Avast Free and Malwarebytes, it's all you'll ever need. As for a firewall, as long as you're behind a router which has a nat firewall then you'll be fine.

[Ambroos]

goretsky, on 14 October 2012 - 07:47, said:

Hello,

A software-based application firewall can be useful for screening a notebook computer from attacks when it is connected to an untrusted network, such as a public Wi-Fi hotspot. Same with on a shared private network (dorm, home, etc.).

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Wouldn't Windows' built-in firewall on an up-to-date installation do the job just fine in those situations? At our school and dorm network for example all clients are isolated and can't communicate with each other.

[Nothing Here]

Copernic, on 12 October 2012 - 19:44, said:

Perhaps someone didn't noticed that the latest version of ZA offers Kaspersky Antivirus for free?

Kaspersky has turned into trash itself. I used to buy a license for it, but quit using it about 3yrs ago. I use MSE and it has only failed me once. But that was my fault, I was beta testing release 2, instead of staying on the stable version.

[HawkMan]

JJ_, on 14 October 2012 - 14:51, said:

'Experts' of Neowin, please explain to me how your NAT gateway, your beloved MSE and half baked Windows 7 firewall at default settings will protect against unknown 0-day threats or driveby's from sending out your keystrokes or personal files to the attacker?

That's the job of your AV and heuristics. firewalls are to protect from targeted attacks or remote attacks. at the point when outbund traffic matters, it's to late and the virus will, if it's a decent one, have disabled your FW anyway.

a FW has a purpose, it's not what you think it is.

[Enron]

Zone Alarm is great if you're using Windows ME. So is ICQ, RealAudio, and Bonzi Buddy!

[+sc302]

JJ_, on 14 October 2012 - 14:51, said:

I don't understand why a lot of the so called 'experts' on Neowin seem to be fixated on advising people on using the half baked Windows 7 firewall or not having a firewall at all. By default, the WIndows 7 firewall allows all outbound traffic. You can set it to block outbound traffic but then you will have to manually create a rule for each and every application which you wish to allow access to the internet (talk about tedious). Most annoying of all is that it will not prompt you when a new program wants to establish an outgoing connection.

'Experts' of Neowin, please explain to me how your NAT gateway, your beloved MSE and half baked Windows 7 firewall at default settings will protect against unknown 0-day threats or driveby's from sending out your keystrokes or personal files to the attacker?

Where do I even begin to rebuttel this? Let me start with understanding nat and you do not. If you did you wouldn't have this argument.

Nat by default stops incoming attacks against your internal network. All routers do nat. Also many routers support other firewall attributes. Even corp firewalls do not get updates and what have you as often that these pos near useless "firewalls" do.

Your internal network is controlled by you and you allow what attaches to your network so therefore is secure against your neighbors for the most part anyway. I would be more concerned with someone breaking your wireless than someone getting into your network from the Internet.

Also, in case you didn't know, your pos router, that you have no faith in what so ever, has gotten attacked about 5000 times in the time it takes you to read this post. So even though you have absolutely no faith in it, it has done its job in protecting you better than you could have even imagined.

A software firewall is good for protecting you on unsecure networks like hotels, public hot spots, library networks, etc. But on secure networks they are nothing more than unnecessary overhead.

[JJ_]

HawkMan, on 14 October 2012 - 15:16, said:

That's the job of your AV and heuristics. firewalls are to protect from targeted attacks or remote attacks. at the point when outbund traffic matters, it's to late and the virus will, if it's a decent one, have disabled your FW anyway.

a FW has a purpose, it's not what you think it is.

Nothing is flawless including AV heuristics or software firewalls. The first thing a 0-day exploit will do is try to disable any security software on a target machine. If your AV and its self defence succumbs, at least firewall will block all outbound connections if **** hits the fan.

Yes, a software firewall has a purpose. I'd suggest you read up on them instead of making blanket statements

http://en.wikipedia....rsonal_firewall

[+remixedcat]

common sense is the best anti-virus.

[Singh400]

ZA was pretty good back in the day. I would always recommend it along with Sygate and Comodo. But since ZA got brought out, it turned to ****. I think Sygate got brought out earlier too.

Only one that remains today is Comodo, but since the Windows 7 firewall is perfect. Kinda makes Comodo redundant.

[Ambroos]

Singh400, on 14 October 2012 - 15:51, said:

ZA was pretty good back in the day. I would always recommend it along with Sygate and Comodo. But since ZA got brought out, it turned to ****. I think Sygate got brought out earlier too.

Only one that remains today is Comodo, but since the Windows 7 firewall is perfect. Kinda makes Comodo redundant.

Sygate was amazing. It's still a shame Symantec bought it and discontinued the free version completely.

[HawkMan]

JJ_, on 14 October 2012 - 15:44, said:

Nothing is flawless including AV heuristics or software firewalls. The first thing a 0-day exploit will do is try to disable any security software on a target machine. If your AV and its self defence succumbs, at least firewall will block all outbound connections if **** hits the fan.

Yes, a software firewall has a purpose. I'd suggest you read up on them instead of making blanket statements

http://en.wikipedia....rsonal_firewall

:facepalm:

didn't read m post at all did you ?

[+sc302]

remixedcat, on 14 October 2012 - 15:49, said:

common sense is the best anti-virus.

You ask way too much of people.

[JJ_]

sc302, on 14 October 2012 - 15:29, said:

Where do I even begin to rebuttel this? Let me start with understanding nat and you do not. If you did you wouldn't have this argument.

Nat by default stops incoming attacks against your internal network. All routers do nat. Also many routers support other firewall attributes. Even corp firewalls do not get updates and what have you as often that these pos near useless "firewalls" do.

Your internal network is controlled by you and you allow what attaches to your network so therefore is secure against your neighbors for the most part anyway. I would be more concerned with someone breaking your wireless than someone getting into your network from the Internet.

Also, in case you didn't know, your pos router, that you have no faith in what so ever, has gotten attacked about 5000 times in the time it takes you to read this post. So even though you have absolutely no faith in it, it has done its job in protecting you better than you could have even imagined.

A software firewall is good for protecting you on unsecure networks like hotels, public hot spots, library networks, etc. But on secure networks they are nothing more than unnecessary overhead.

NAT gateways stop incoming attacks, I think that's something we can agree on. A user instigates what comes in and goes out on a network, yes, but how will NAT help in a driveby malware attack where it goes under the radar of an AV's heuristics? Just so you know, malware does tend to call home.

As for firewalls being good for untrusted wireless networks, the average Neowinian with little knowledge in networking would assume simply running a firewall would protect them which is far from the truth. A software firewall is useless on untrusted networks unless you set it up to block all traffic apart from the port you are tunnelling on. Better advice would be to use a VPN instead.

Why can't you be content what you "think" and help the OP instead.