Through the past years I have seen that when I didn't have a firewall I had to reformat my pc every few months due to hacker attacks and the like(spyware, etc.). Keeping in mind that it's difficult to maintain to maintain a secure system with an 8 yr old brother.
Sebastian Gottschalk wrote: : > firewalls are so horrid, why don't you give me a suggestion as to what : > I should be using.
: Eh.... nothing at all? I admit, most people have problems understanding : that there's technically no need for any firewall for home users, and that : they're fallen for marketing crap.
Please, tell us about your world and what your users are doing. I'm very interested in hearing how you solved this, because we've done some investments for firewalling our travelling users.
Or are you living in a pre eternal-september era using an internet with only academic users? ;)
Please educate us, I'm sure more people are interested in learning from your experience. :)
Lars
Well, then YOU did something wrong and the "firewall" merely masked the actual problems (and didn't provide any real security).
Well, through the past years I have seen that even thoughI didn't have any firewall I never had to reformat my pc ever, crashed only due to hardware failures and I've never been so dumb to install spyware, etc.
But it isn't.
If you call yourself an admin, you'd never give your users admin rights, locked down their machines to offer only required services, wouldn't allow them to run any software except the whitelisted one, would ensure proper patch/update maintainance, and would understand that no host-based packet filter whatsoever could even partitially replace such proper procedures for securing the host.
Use the XP firewall in conjunction with the router. It's all you need. You don't even really need the XP firewall but it wil help protect you if you are on a LAN.
There are two possibilities:
Yours, VB.
The only qualm I have with my router is that I'm not quite sure about how to customize it. It has 3 settings(off, low, and high) but the only way I can think of customizing those settings at all is through port forwarding and port triggering.
Sebastian, I really don't understand how you can say that a firewall is unnecessary for the average home user. There are times when simply by going on google and doing a simple search can lead to spyware appearing on your computer. Nowadays, every single computer connected to the internet is under a constant threat of spyware, trojans, viruses, etc. If you can't see that then you must be very naive.
Actually there's a quite trivial argument: Average home users don't have any clue about TCP/IP and/or networking. And from a technical point of view, the need doesn't exist either.
Not just that this is utter bullshit, but totally unrelated. A firewall can't do anything against spyware.
Bullshit. Those are all tools for the user himself to threaten his computer.
Can just return that. You believe in a firewall being like magic.
First of all, explain to me exactly why you think that the need doesn't exist. Secondly, there are some firewalls that offer spyware prevention. Thirdly, Spyware and Trojans are not "TOOLS" for the user to threaten his own computer as you. And no, I don't believe that firewalls are "magic" but there are many people, including several in this Usenet Group I'm sure, who would disagree with you.
An empty 'netstat' output is trivial to achieve.
And, of course, without any in-depth knowledge about TCP/IP and networking, you can't achieve any security with a host-based packet filter.
Which is, of course, nonsense.
They are. They're purely user-inducted threats, f.e. by installing them voluntarily or by intentionally using known-defective or known-insecure software.
Oh SHUTUP you arrogant snob.
For his needs Z>Grimscythe wrote:
than the one that already comes built
Zone Alarm isn't fine for anything, especially not his needs.
I am. Just your problem is that you don't want to accept it.
Some people simply do´nt wanna know if they´re infected.
arja
What are you talking about?
Mr. Arnold6 skriver:
Probaly that as personal software firewall can't do any good (in a singel suer windows like enviroment anyhow) du many people will like thet do do something good so they don't have to care any more. These people seldom like to know when there protections fails as that means that they have to work.
/ Balp
Well, yes and no.
Yes, a personal firewall can be seen as a host-based intrusion detection system.
No, it doesn't become useful either, because it adds so many complexity and known vulnerabilities as well as masses of errors to the system that, even if it wasn't so trivially to bypass, it would still have a negative net effect on the system's security.
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