Firewalls - Any Advice?

BarbM,

As you noted the Sygate Firewall product was bought out and is no longer supported, which means it isn't being maintained.

Since support ended there have been multiple vulnerabilities discovered, which make the use of this firewall unsafe.

Vulnerability Report: Sygate Personal Firewall 5.x
http://secunia.com/product/254/?task=advisories

I'd recommend that you look into more current firewall products that have support, there are a couple discussed earlier in this thread.

Bitman
 
To Mr Bitman, have now Online Armor, a little harder to configure but good all the same.
McAfee AV died in the butt, so now have Avira freebie, and works okay.
Went to my tuneup place to see how well both perform, and the firewall is okay but they said Avira was not detected. Wierd!
 
Are there any utilities that you can use to test the abilities of firewalls to make sure they are as secure as they should be?
 
Daz3210:

Here's a pair of tests:
"ShieldsUP!" primarily tests inbound vulnerability. "LeakTest" primarily tests outbound vulnerability.

My personal feeling is that if you have a clean system (i.e. no spyware, keyloggers, Trojans, etc.) the "LeakTest" is less critical than the "ShieldsUP!" test.

Other very important considerations in securing your system are:
  1. Making sure your browser settings are not to lax.
  2. Keeping your software up-to-date so that known vulnerabilities can not be exploited.
 
After going through the trouble of cleaning up my PC again with the kind help of pskelley again I've been thoroughly reviewing the advice given on here as to how to avoid malware catastrophe. Amongst these things I spotted the fact that Norton Internet Security was in fact as useless as I suspected; via the Matousec test results thing. Norton frequently eats all my system resources and fails to spot anything vaguely damaging. (It was difficult to describe my feelings towards Norton without using expletives!)

So, in short: Should I remove Norton Internet Security 2008 completely, and pick up a nice little package like Kaspersky? Or perhaps a separate firewall and Virus Scanner etc? Your advice would be fantastically appreciated.

All the best,

Dunc
 
Hello Dunc,

Personally I don't care for suites.

I use Comodo firewall free, without the Comodo SafeSurf-ASK Toolbar option, and Eset Nod32 anti virus, paid.

If I didn't use Nod32 I would try a trial of Kaspersky's AV. I also have Avira's AntiVir free on another computer.

I'm happy with those programs at the moment. :)
 
Kool and the Gang. Once my current problem is officially diagnosed as sorted I will endeavour to follow your example and install Comodo and Eset Nod32, after getting rid of Norton's foul scourge. Thanks very much for the advice.

All the best,

Dunc
 
Just for future reference to future readers: I have uninstalled Norton and have replaced it with Comodo and Nod32 working in glorious fashion. These two fine pieces of software run smoothly without eating system resources like ol' Norton and instil far more confidence in me as to my system's security. Thanks for your valuable advice tashi.
 
Just wanted to say :) Comodo is a Turkish made firewall. Melih is the president of Comodo and Egemen has written the core of Comodo. Such a perfect firewall being achieved by turkish engineers makes us proud. :wav:
 
PepiMK said:
I've recently started trying out Comodo as well and quite like it :)
Will probably replace Outpost 1.0 as my favorite (about time, as much outdated as that is ;) ).
Click to expand...

Yeah, I like comodo - A little bit talkative by default though :laugh:
 
i just tried the shieldsup test, and all ports showed as stealth, but i also got this message:

Ping Reply: RECEIVED (FAILED) — Your system REPLIED to our Ping (ICMP Echo) requests, making it visible on the Internet. Most personal firewalls can be configured to block, drop, and ignore such ping requests in order to better hide systems from hackers. This is highly recommended since "Ping" is among the oldest and most common methods used to locate systems prior to further exploitation.

all ports are stealth but my system still replied to ping? what does that mean?

i use the xp firewall, and have used zonealarm before but the results where the same with both. i also use a router/modem with the firewall turned on, i dont think i have seen anything special in the xp firewall log, but that is maybe because i have the router/modem firewall.

i have been recommended online armor and kerio, but some firewalls is just an annoyance and asks to many questions. do someone have an easy to use firewall to recommend that blocks the ping mentioned above?

i have now stopped using utorrent because of what i have been reading here: http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=31554&page=2 where is that originally posted by the way? i couldnt find it as a sticky, and the other sticky is different than that one. utorrent was mainly the reason why i didnt use another firewall than the xp one because the others was just to difficult to configure with utorrent, but it is easier now when i dont have any filesharing program of course. i couldnt connect to the internet when using pctools firewall so i will not use that one.
 
I say, the PCTools Firewall is a joke :P (since this is the Tavern afterall).

I also received the same results are blues, all ports stealth, however my computer responded the Ping. :scratch:
 
drragostea said:
I say, the PCTools Firewall is a joke :P (since this is the Tavern afterall).

I also received the same results are blues, all ports stealth, however my computer responded the Ping. :scratch:
Click to expand...


i hope someone have an answer to what it is that is causing it.
 
Re: Comodo Firewall and ShieldsUP! Ping test.

It seems that Comodo Firewall does not prevent responses to pings (ICMP Echo) requests. See the following thread the Comodo Forum:
On the subject of ShieldsUP! pings being responded to while using Comodo Firewall, I found post 13 of 23 in the following thread in the CNET forums: Spyware, viruses, & security forum interesting:
 
blues said:
i use the xp firewall,
Click to expand...

Which [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]only blocks incoming[/FONT] traffic, although better than no firewall at all. :)

blues said:
i have now stopped using utorrent because of what i have been reading here: http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=31554&page=2 where is that originally posted by the way? i couldnt find it as a sticky, and the other sticky is different than that one.
Click to expand...

Actually that is a new policy at two sites, still under review here and if posted, probably wouldn't be in the same format.

Cheers.
 
well

i use zonealarm and i didn't fail one shields up test. all shields up tests were unable to ping my computer. :)
 
md usa spybot fan said:
Re: Comodo Firewall and ShieldsUP! Ping test.

It seems that Comodo Firewall does not prevent responses to pings (ICMP Echo) requests. See the following thread the Comodo Forum:
On the subject of ShieldsUP! pings being responded to while using Comodo Firewall, I found post 13 of 23 in the following thread in the CNET forums: Spyware, viruses, & security forum interesting:
Click to expand...


this from the comodo thread was interesting: Killing ICMP causes real-world trouble, unlike the imaginatory "wow t3h noes, I'm visible and hackers will get me" nonsense published by GRC on Shields Up, upsetting almost all users who have no clue about real security and have been recommended to use Shields Up as a way to test their firewall.

so then maybe shieldsup is useless? and just give out information that is wrong.

maybe it is my router/modem that replyed to ping, the firewall was off by default but i turned it on some weeks ago. i will try to turn off upnp on the computer and router/modem just to test with shieldsup again and reply back in this thread with the results.


tashi said:
Which [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica]only blocks incoming[/FONT] traffic, although better than no firewall at all. :)



Actually that is a new policy at two sites, still under review here and if posted, probably wouldn't be in the same format.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

the security experts scares me about what they say about filesharing, but it is mostly the downloads that CAN be dangerous. i would not recommend anyone to download programs with filesharing programs, as almost everything i have tested with antivirus and antimalware programs that was downloaded with utorrent had trojans, i rarely have seen viruses in a while. it was fun to test it, but it was just tests. i have one cd with malware again, and some malware that spybot didnt found is on it. but this tests is maybe like playing a game with the computer:fear:
 
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