Opera 9.5 Built in Firewall

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

cu

59cobalt

Spammer!

I wouldn't call that spam. It's either a joke or a sad example of a clueless dude mislead by "security" sites.

If you know of any effective attack against it, how about posting a URL, otherwise you're as clueless as those other idiots who sell hardware routers on commission and need to maintain their illusion of superiority

Buster, you don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about.

1. There's no such thing as "stealth" in IP. That's just braindead marketing babble of people who failed to understand how IP works.
2. Client applications (like, say, web browsers) are not supposed to open listening sockets on external interfaces. Therefore there's no need at all to firewall them.
3. Stateful inspection doesn't have anything at all to do with preventing data leaks.

Now get lost.

cu

59cobalt

"ASCII" wrote in :

Why would there be any advantage for firewalling just one application? Sandboxing: yes. Web browser: why? And why promote a BETA version?

Must be a very minor feature if they don't even bothering mentioning it at

on the page or in their tour video, nor is a firewall mentioned in their changelogs at

Good idea, since you obviously have nothing to contribute. ...and go find some other venue to air the frustration with your devoid life, maybe play superman with an Amtrak.

Just guessing that the primary interface (browser) to the major source of danger (internet) is the most likely focus of concern. Sandboxing would be an unnecessary encumbrance if all your applications were trusted

Not really 'promoting' it (I have no interest in the company) it was the version I finally upgraded to from an earlier legacy v6.06 that I used to run with everything from ATGuard to ZoneAlarm, but there are still enough unresolved bugs that I've now gone back to the stable v9.27. This version seems a little faster loading pages yet just as invisible and/or invulnerable, so I'll stay here for awhile.

"ASCII" wrote in :

Which would be covered by a general firewall that enforces connectivity on any particular application, including the web browser.

You just said that you didn't trust the web browser. Sandboxing doesn't sandbox every application. It sandboxes just the application that you want sandboxed. Have a look at Sandboxie.

And as for the part that you snipped out, just WHERE does Opera claim that their beta 9.5 version contains a firewall within just their browser?

I never said I didn't trust the browser, just offered a guess as to why it would include firewall behavior.

I don't recall them ever making such a claim, even though I was surmising that it behaved as if it had a built in firewall.

Hey I'm not like that other twit that's only here to bicker and flame, I was simply curious about the behavior of a browser I had just installed.

Which it doesn't.

Which it hasn't.

Wrong. You were making ridiculous claims based on foolish "security testing tools" providing output you didn't understand how to interpret.

Opera is a good browser. It doesn't need clueless promotion.

"ASCII" wrote in :

Read your Subject line.

Oh. Guess I won't waste more time trying to find out where was that firewalling within Opera. If they had added it inside the app, I wanted to see why they thought it was necessary. Please don't make up stuff.

My subject line, not Opera's, and it was because I got online results that would indicate some firewall behavior was taking place. I thought there might be a new trend in current browsers that I was unaware of, sorry to see this group has fallen so far.

I only guessed why it behaved as it does, I have no idea why some Norwegian company thinks something is necessary, if they even think that in the first place

No need You're doing a good enough job of that as it is

You know, I've got a little extra time the next few days so I won't plonk you guys, maybe just see the depths of intellectual depravity that has come to inhabit this forum. carry on kids...

Returning a full 'stealth' rating from an online nmap site is definitely firewall behavior, even if you deny it. Just how much commission do you get from selling those hardware routers, enough to put chitlins on your plate?

"ASCII" wrote in :

Oh, yeah, it was me claiming Opera had a web browser, sure.

While killfiling does eliminate "noise" in a newsgroup that you inhabit, it also does mean the plonked get the last word. I have no qualms about you killfiling me.

Yes, we're the children based on your so-adult opinion announced as fact based your conjecture on some unindentified behavior in a web browser where YOU say they have some functionality which has obviously been proven that you didn't have a clue about your statement. Yes, it was our fault in interpreting your misleading claim. You contrived, you mislead. When you got caught, like a child, you tried to recover with justifications hoping to provide you with excuses and now you try to redirect the blame. Pathetic.

I never said that they do not have a firewall built into their browser. I said that they make no mention of such functionality. I found nothing to substantiate your unfounded claim. If you wanted to validate your claim regarding your *guess* about behavior, you couldn't do some better investigation before spouting your claim? Since you are an Opera user, you couldn't go ask in the Opera newsgroups (a list of which is available at

Instead of professing knowledge and announcing added functionality (but which was based on conjecture), you could've asked over there first.

I don't use Opera but thought it was something to review if only to figure out why they thought an application-embedded firewall had any value. Since I don't use Opera, there would be no past history of experience with it by me nor would I have been visiting the Opera newsgroups to know about any such feature enhancement. You made the claim so I figured you were an Opera user. Not many users go extolling a product unless they actually use it. It's been awhile since I've seen a user touting a feature that doesn't exist in a product. I've seen spammers do it but not actual users.

So now to move onto your claim although based on conjecture ...

When you tested Opera and did the stealth and leak tests, did you disable any and all software firewalls running on your test host? Obviously if you wanted to test Opera's conjectured firewall abilities, you would have to disable all other firewall, security, anti-virus, anti-malware, or other protective software to ensure that they weren't already providing the firewalling effect that you noticed.

Did you also disable any upstream firewalls, like in your NAT router? Did you bypass the router and hook your host directly to the your Internet access point (dsl/cable modem, satellite, whatever)? Many users do these tests and then claim success but were never testing the software on their host. Instead they were testing the firewall that is in their router.

"Passes as stealth on Shields Up". Not sure why you would make that claim. The web browser is a client process that issues connect requests (it initiates the handshaking to establish a socket with the server that was listening for the inbound connection requests). The web browser is not a server process listening on a port. The web browser isn't going to respond to a ping or accept connection requests on a port on which it isn't listening. The web browser issues outbound connect requests to somewhere else that listens on, for example, port 80 (for HTTP). The web browser is not listening for inbound connection requests on port 80.

Leak tests have a client (that you allow to run) on your host try to make an outbound connection to see if the firewall blocks that attempt or prompts you for permission to allow that connection. Since you obviously need to permit the firewall to allow connections for your web browser to be useful (unless you are unique in wanting to use it to only render your own local HTML files), the web browser is always "leaking" through the firewall. It is the leak clients you are testing, not the web browser.

PCFlank doesn't explain just how its leak tests function? You didn't see the button was labelled "Download" and that you were downloading an .exe program to execute locally that would then test your firewall (and that the .exe you downloaded was not the Opera web browser)? You need to spend some time reading the GRC and PCFlank web sites to understand just what those tests do and how they execute.

More babble.... nmap does not use the term "stealth" - and ShieldsUp does not build on nmap.

These are the only security enhancements that I can see. But that's no reason to pounce on the OP. I guess this is Usenet after all...

Security

• Improved back-end for Fraud Protection, now enabled by default. * Added support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates. * Added automatic updates of root certificates. * Introduced a new security notification scheme in the address field: o gold lock on green field for secure sites with Extended Validation o silver lock on yellow field for regular secure sites o question mark on gray field for HTTPS sites with problems o no notification for normal sites o fraud warning on red field for blacklisted sites * Opera now distinguishes between local servers on localhost, intranet servers, and remote servers on the Internet. Local servers can use remote resources, but not vice versa.

The vehement attack over semantic distinctions of what a firewall involves, suggests a woefully vacuous level of immaturity. Reminds me of a know it all that once posted here under the name Duane Arnold of Elgin Illinois, seems he worked at some retail outlet pushing hardware routers and swore up and down that nothing was better.

ATGUARD? Lmao!

Please tell me you aren't still using that relic.