Firewalls

[Pwnage]

Im looking for a good lightweight firewall. Ive used zonealarm before, but didnt really like anything about it other than the fact that it showed the up and down in the taskbar with green and red bars and that it asked me if i wanted to grant outbound connections. Im looking for a firewall that will allow me to have control over what programs can access the internet. Basicly when something trys to connect to the internet, it will ask weither or not i want it to.

[chaosblade]

Thats about every firewall in windows, really. All of them are application-based (tough, windows cant do connection-based filtering anyway) and almost all of them have learning-modes.

Try Tiny Personal Firewall, Seems to be a good all-around firewall. I heard good things about lavasoft's firewall and about outpost aswell.

Though, ZoneAlarm is known for its good level of protection, even the freeware edition.

For the record id say that outbound filtering is pretty useless on windows (application based) anyway

PS: this and your other post are on the wrong forum - Troubleshooting is for problems with uTorrent. Use 'Chat' or 'General' next time.

[BloodStaindHurricane]

Doesnt Lavasoft's firewall use the Outpost firewall engine? Basically same firewall w/o all of the other extra features present in outpost.

Try Look'n'Stop.

One of the lightest firewalls you'll run across.

[winMX_67]

hmmm...look n' stop looks pretty nice. Personally I think ZA is fine...

[1c3d0g]

ZoneAlarm is a resource hog, for me anyway. Lavasoft's firewall is pretty nice...and I can get it for "free".

[Pwnage]

@chaosblade why would you say "For the record id say that outbound filtering is pretty useless on windows (application based) anyway :p"?

What dose that mean?

[Firon]

Filtering by application is utterly useless and insecure.

[Ultima]

I wonder about that... I usually know what I want and don't want connecting to the internet, and having outbound filtering gives me peace of mind knowing that unknown applications can't access the internet without my permission.

[Pwnage]

exactly what ultima said, but why is that a security risk?

[Ultima]

They weren't saying that it was a security risk, just that it's not as secure as a lot of people make it out to be. That would be the case if you don't know what you're allowing to connect (it becomes pointless, since you'd probably allow any application an outbound connection if you didn't know what you were doing).

[Firon]

Ultima: the problem is that any application can easily bypass that filtering by masquerading as "trusted" ones, or many other methods, and LeakTest has proven it time and time again, by only using GENERAL exploits, not even stuff targetted for any specific firewall...

[Ultima]

That might be the case with crappy firewalls, but mine here (ZoneAlarm) prompts me whenever it tries to connect. Besides this...

This first versions 1.x of Leaktest simply demonstrate how any TRIVIAL malicious program can easily bypass any current software firewall! The only exception to this is ZoneLabs' free ZoneAlarm, because ZoneAlarm is the only firewall to cryptographically certify the identity of executable programs.

=P

ZoneAlarm warns me whenever an application changes (it checks hashes as well as name and whatever), so applications can't really masquerade as others.

[Firon]

Ah, I see. I suppose that makes ZA stand above the rest, but unfortunately that still leaves all the users on crappy firewalls. Good to know there's at least one that isn't so easily beaten, though

on another note, what were the questions you wanted me to add to the FAQ? I forgot what they were... plugin system was the only one I can recall.

[Ultima]

The last version of LeakTest was released a VERY long time ago, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure that most major software firewalls fixed this problem when news of this problem spread; it's too critical to leave open.

Edit: Just found a scoreboard for some firewalls.

[Firon]

the last version was released in June of this year. you'd be surprised how lazy some of the companies are, the average user won't know of it, so they don't really care.

[Ultima]

Meh I meant to edit that part I wrote about it being released a long time ago (after rereading the page), but forgot to =P

[Pwnage]

this topic went off topic

[Ultima]

Well, it sorta went into this tangent because you asked, "but why is that a security risk?"

Anyway, Outpost firewall (I tried it before, it was a decent firewall) is fairly light. I've also heard of Look n Stop, which BloodStaindHurricane mentioned earlier (which is very light, according to what I've read about it before). I'm not sure how exactly Look n Stop works, though, since I've never used it. Thus, I'm not sure if it will ask you when an application tries to access the internet.

[chaosblade]

Connection-based filtering is alot more powerfull, but seems windows just isnt up to doing that, too advanced for its networking ;]

[ColdArmor]

ZA on my computer uses 3mb of memory.. not a resource hog at all.

and if you set program control to low it will automatically give programs access without the annoying bubbles, and it will also weed out the bad apps.

[Astral Monkey]

ZA on my computer uses 3mb of memory.. not a resource hog at all.

Yeah zlclient.exe uses 3-7mb but vsmon.exe is a part of zonealarm and it uses 10-19mb... so it does use some memory but it doesn't bother me.

[theok]

Hi guys,

every time i quit uTorrent after a download and try to disconnect my internet connection, my internet connection will not respond. I therefore need to switch off my computer manually . Any ideas?

[maestro_black]

Is it a dodgy usb modem?

Try reseting the modem.

Beyond that spyware/virus scans abound, check task manager, run netstat, find everything connecting and using the connection after you kill utorrent. Then isolate the ones that are causing the problem and search for updates.