Sygate Personal Firewall Pro

"Experience" as in "having used it": no. "Experience" as in "having taken a closer look at it": yes.

Yes. Sygate is broken by design as it has an interactive service running with SYSTEM privileges. That's a big no-no.

Use the Windows-Firewall and Software Restriction Policies. And of course:

- Don't use admin accounts for day-to-day work.

- Keep the system patched.

- Disable services you don't need.

- Disable autoruns.

- Avoid IE and O(E). ...

cu

Okay, thanks for the info. :)

m.

According to this, the only thing I have to worry about is rogue cookies giving out info about me. Also according to this, I should have some firewall option to stop it happening, but I can't seem to find it.

I'm glad Ad-Aware is considered trustworthy. I think I'll try that Spybot S&D as well, to be extra safe.

I'm using AVG Pro. I don't know if it's any good, but it supports Windows 2003, and that makes it better than every other one I've tried.

This was the first thing I disabled.

But it's so hard to know who's a jerk and who isn't! I don't know anything about this sort of thing, and it's very easy for me to assume that everybody else does. :(

Thanks for the infos :)

m.

Spybot just found about 50 'items' that Ad-Aware missed. I love free stuff :)

m.

Marie Cox napisa³(a):

It is the best proof that both your firewall and AV are a piece of junk! :)

Posting through anonymous remailers and belittling other posters are two very strong indicators.

cu

Yes, I've been running Sygate for about 5-years now on Windows. Currently using Sygate Pro. It has served me well and I've never had malware getting into my machine. I think it is an excellent software firewall--once the user gets acquainted with it and learns to set it up correctly. I suppose it is like most software--not 100% dependable.

I have never used any of the other firewalls and therefore cannot make any recommendations other than to continue useing Sygate.

Casey

Marie Cox wrote in news:45aa3ef3$0$32031 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.zen.co.uk:

I used it a fair bit on stand alone 2K systems just simply because it was a cleaner app than Zone alarm or any of the others, and Symantec applications were at the point where I didn't really trust them anymore from bloat. With XP's built in abilities I dropped it for no other reason that it was un-necessary for the task at hand- protecting stand alone systems outside of my network. I had fairly good luck with it, and really had no complaints. The biggest thing I looked for was that it be as silent in it's dealings with the job it needed to do as possible so as not to disturb the users too much. This was accomplished through the proper setup for that purpose and it pretty much left them alone afterwards. If you are comfortable with it, I say run it. There is no 100% certain solution to it other than to cut your ethernet cable, so what you are doing is a step in the right direction, at least you are using something, and asking for opinions/ advice. Undoubtedly there will be a barrage of posts telling you this is flawed, that is flawed, this and that leak, but the fact is, all of the security solutions have some flaw or another, and the only real secure system is that which has succumbed to the cable cutters;-) To sum it up, if you are comfortable with the app, then go with it. Each will have good points and bad. The one thing I might suggest (quietly though) is to look at implementing a perimeter solution. From your original post, you are using 2K3, and that would lead me to the conclusion that there is at least a small office environment. Just a suggestion though, never hurts.

snip

Very true

Not if you visit this newsgroup very often.

Casey

Thats a rather vauge statement to make isnt it?.Can you clarify?.To make such a statement i guess you know what the 50 items detected by spybot were and what settings were used for spybot avg and sygate?.If so please divulge. me

Also..... They are very impolite toward posters who sincerely ask for help on software firewalls. They are quite knowledgeable but lead you to believe they know everything about everything. They are somewhat like buzzards that fly in and mess all over the threads of people truely seeking help with their firewalls. :-( Amazing--Only a few have shown up on this thread. Marie, have a good day and good luck with Sygate if you continue to use it. Casey

Ansgar,

| Use the Windows-Firewall and Software Restriction Policies.

I use WinFW but am unsure re Software Restriction Policies. Please elaborate.

| - Disable autoruns.

Does this include auto updateing of resident (real-time) AV application and MS patches etc.?

| - Avoid IE and O(E).

Have you reviewed IE7 yet? (I have 'hardened' it considerably, practice safe-hex and don't think its any less secure than Firefox/Opera).

I never had problems running OE6, you've got to know how to handle it though :)

BTW, have you got an opinion re

Mel :)

Software Restriction Policies [1] help preventing malicious code from being executed on a given system, although they are no silver bullet. You still have to make decisions about which software to add to the list and which not (e.g. when installing new software), thus it's still a good idea to side it with a virus scanner (IMHO). However, it's a far more reasonable approach than the concept implemented by most software firewalls to try and control malicious software *after* it was executed.

No. By "autoruns" I meant mainly the automatic exeution of stuff when inserting a CD/DVD or other exchangeable media. Poor wording on my part. Sorry.

Of course it's also a good idea to check what's automatically started on system startup or logon as well as what's executed periodically, but that's a different story.

No.

I am aware of the fact that IE can be locked down, however, that takes a good amount of fine-tuning. Also IE has a history of bugs (partially due to its integration with the system and the incorporation of ActiveX), and I'm not too confident that this is going to change with IE 7. Plus, I prefer separation of web browser and operating system so that I can replace the web browser when I feel there's need for it.

I'm pretty much capable of doing that. However, why would I bother when there are mail clients that can be used rather painlessly (and without inheriting all IE bugs by using its engine)?

As of yet I haven't looked at Seconfig XP, but judging from the description on the page it seems to do more or less the same things as win32sec [2] or the script from ntsvcfg.de.

You may want to take a closer look at the script provided there. ;)

Okay, I did the Spybot thing you said, and nothing seems to have changed, so I'm just gonna assume that it's working. Spybot keeps finding a load of dodgy cookies. Is there any way I can block these as they happen?

I got Kaspersky as well, and that hasn't found anything so maybe AVG just got lucky.

Thanks for all your info, and thanks to everyone else who's provided info as well.

m.