What's up with Jetico Firewall?

I don't use the XP FW on XP Pro on this laptop while on the road it's using BlackIce that can't stop outbound either and has it's worthless Application Control, like all worthless App. Controls are in personal FW(s), disabled.

I use Active Ports so I can see connections and somewhat what Applications are making connections.

I use IPsec as a supplement to BI so that if I need to stop outbound traffic, I can do it. IPsec can stop inbound and outbound traffic by port, protocol or IP and is only a supplemental solution and not a front line solution..

I implemented the AnalogX rules on the machine and set the services on the client side that I wanted to come through, like POP3, SMTP, NNTP on the client side etc, etc. I did have to adjust the rules for SMTP as it was set for port 25 and I needed to change it to 587 that the ISP is using.

BI was whining about traffic hitting the Windows Networking ports the were being blocked even on its highest notification level and I got tired of it. So I went to the IPsec AnalogX rules for Windows Networking and set the rule to *Deny* and never heard another peep out of BI again, even though BI was blocking to begin with along with the MS File and Print Sharing was removed off the dial-up connection and couldn't come through anyway..

However, IPsec on XP Home doesn't have a graphical UI like Pro that you can access the IPsec policies. But that can be done at the DOS Command prompt.

You should configure the XP O/S as much as possible to attack for a machine that has a direct connection to the modem and the Internet.

Duane :)

Jetico can be a regular pain in the ass alright, especially if you hit some of the bugs/quirks. It is annoying to begin with, but there are a few bugs that put it into infinite loops on some popups and the only way out is to shut it down and/or reboot. As software firewalls go, it is one of the most annoying and hardest to adjust to. I hear they are working on a version 2 so perhaps they will make it more usable in the future.. I had some fun with it last year, but no more for me. It's just too much work and I can't live with the bugs either..

snip... After trying this one out and Kerio too I said

Why not solve your problem by trying Sygate Personal Firewall (free) v5.6. Its about as straight forward as they can come and doesn't have all that razzle-dazzle. Its as good as the user can set it up.

can control Applications, IPs, Protocols, Ports (local/remote), incoming/outgoing, allow/block. (what else do you need?) Casey

Because Sygate has huge security drawbacks.

No.

Yours, VB.

Why are you so vague. With all of your knowledge, surely you could give the specifics.

Yes.

- opening windows with SYSTEM privilege

- easily DoSed

- privacy option does actually omit the supposedly protected data

- a restricted user can change the configuration

- certain world-writeable registry keys and files ...

No, trying so doesn't necessarily result in success.

The word is *global*-writeable

Duane :)

See for example: - or just use an usenet archive of your choice.

;-)

It can't, because there are so many possibilities to just ignore a "Personal Firewall". Only very dumb malware is using the "normal" way.

It took me some minutes to fool Sygate, for example.

Yours, VB.

Thanks for the info, I've save your post to the hdd. I will look into configuring my PC as you suggest. I am behind a router though so I'm not directly conected to the interent. I was also reading about how to use an old pentium I have and configure it with two tulip cards and linux and use that as a firewall but that sounds like a lot of work.

I've used Sygate and I like it but it has some bugs too. I can't remember the details but I seem to remember it causing some other apps I had running to hang on occasion.

Yea, it's buggy all right. One annoying bug was that it caused my shutdown of XP to hang sometimes.