ZoneAlarm

There seems to be widely differing opinions regarding ZoneAlarm on this forum. What's the problem with it? Gibson Research -

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seem to thinks it's good, and I'm sure they know a lot more about security than most of the critics on this forum!

Jim Ford

Reply to
Jim Ford
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Oh Boy. You just opened up the floodgates ;)

Reply to
fyrfaktry

This question has been answered over and over again. Search the archives of this group.

Yeah, right.

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cu

59cobalt
Reply to
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers

In my experience ZoneAlarm went though a period of unreliability a few years ago, including causing trouble with TCP.

It seems to have been sorted now so I'm giving it another try. As I use a hardware firewall for inbound protection, ZoneAlarm only gets involved with outbound protection.

Reply to
steve

I wish I'd never asked 8^[

Jim Ford

Reply to
Jim Ford

Just keep in mind that the majority of folks here against ZoneAlarm are against all personal firewall software.

Craig

Reply to
Craig

Thanks - sounds sensible advice!

I have a Linux router/firewall and installed ZoneAlarm as a second line of defence on an XP machine. After all, it didn't cost anything.

Jim Ford

Reply to
Jim Ford

All of its options are useless or even counterproductive, with the exception of the host based packet filter. But such a packet filter you're getting with the Windows-Firewall, too. And this packet filter has no braindead concepts like asking the users to decide security related questions.

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Gibson's advices contain nearly anything from helpful information up to completely nonsense.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

Yes it did, it cost you system resources for no real good reason.

Reply to
RAID!!!

What is it protecting your from?

Reply to
RAID!!!

In contrary to the good for nothing windows firewall Zonealarm offers monitoring of the outgoing traffic so you´r notified when you´r infected. Incoming monitoring is done by your NAT router which makes incoming filtering/monitoring of no use..

arja

Reply to
arja

*sigh*

That must be the most braindead reason for using a personal firewall I have ever heard. You don't want to be notified when your computer is already compromised, you want to keep your computer from getting compromised in the first place. Besides, if you must have monitoring of outgoing traffic: Port Reporter [1] does that without the usual downsides of personal firewalls (except for the lack of reliability, which is inherent to this type of monitoring).

[1]
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cu 59cobalt
Reply to
Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers

What? One doesn't want to get infected in the first place. On top of that, the NAT router comes closer to being a FW than ZA. ZA and the rest are just machine level packet filters. A FW separates two networks. The FW protects from the network it's protecting from, the WAN, usually, and protects the network it's protecting, the LAN.

Reply to
Mr. Arnold6

What if the malware has added itself to ZA's "allowed" rules? Then it does not give an alert.

Reply to
Postal Dude

You may find this interesting :)

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Reply to
Kayman

Doesn't password-protecting ZA prevent unauthorized "additions?"

Reply to
Craig

It should, at least in theory. I am not sure if ZA still falls under the snake oil/smoke and mirrors category (haven't messed with it for a few years), but there are a lot of snake oil pf's that can be disabled with something as simple as a registry value change. If I am not mistaken, earlier versions of ZA were vulnerable to that weakness.

Reply to
Postal Dude

Do you have an example of that.

arja

Reply to
arja

"Kayman" schreef in bericht news:ekt7ss$a1h$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org...

That´s what I meant, the win firehole is full of holes otherwise can´t exact see what you are doing :-(

arja

Reply to
arja

Does malware ask if you want to be infected before acting?

arja

Reply to
arja

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