Firewall

[Myxomatosis]

Since Sygate has now died on me, can anyone suggest a good firewall for broadband? Must be freeware and not ZoneAlarm, I have compatibility issues with it.

[General Geoff]

software firewalls are all a bunch of garbage.

Go pick up an old pentium or 486 machine with two nic's and make a hardware firewall.

[Myxomatosis]

God...
[I'm running Fireball right now, no luck]

[DuaneJeffers]

I like Kerio Personal Firewall, It is really good and tis free.

-Duane

[Rocker]

Originally posted by General Geoff
software firewalls are all a bunch of garbage.

Go pick up an old pentium or 486 machine with two nic's and make a hardware firewall.

.... yeah...so you can make a hardware firewall with software now?

[fwgx]

Have a look on the Netgear site, they have a few good uns.

[grumpyBB]

buy a cheap router

[m0e]

Originally posted by Rocker
.... yeah...so you can make a hardware firewall with software now?

My understanding of a hardware firewall is the firmware (the embedded software/OS in the device) monitors and/or limits port activity. Which is basically what a software firewall does. Although I have always seen hardware firewalls recommended as superior to software firewalls I never understood why. We have a router and run ZoneAlarm on our computers, which seems to work pretty good, unless I try to run a server from home. Once I get everything configured to work as a server the system becomes vulnerable again.

[Smeggle]

whats wrong with zone alarm? I never get any compatbility issues with it free or otherwise...I've installed it to most windows based systems with no problems on dial-up. I/S.D.N., and ADSl, etc..

It's the best one as far as I can find and the only firewall that pass's all the Shields up tests (apart from you need to switch of port 5000, which microjerk decided it would leave on by default so all your plug 'n' pray stuff can chatter away happily compromising any security you put on your machine - annoying dorks)

Anyway, I'd like to know what compatibility issues your having? just out of interest..

[DuaneJeffers]

Zone Alarms have been targeted by some anti-spyware sites because of their auto-update feature ... which doesn't tell the user that they are updating their version AND doesn't have a way to disable it. Also Zone Alarms doesn't (at least the free version doesn't) tell you when an attack is in progress AND it doesn't let you know what the IP address is from the Incoming connection. The Pro Version of Zone Alarms does that. HOWEVER, for the price, Kerio does everything Zone Alarms Pro does for free. The Pay version of Kerio gets Web Filtering (web site blocking, ad blocking, JavaScript Blocking, Flash Blocking). For Software Firewalls, Kerio is really good.

Now, I recommend that EVERYONE should be running a Software Firewall as well as a Hardware Firewall (If your using broadband). Why? Well, it helps to be double protected, and it provides some sort of real security. Having only one may make you feel protected, but I know of some ways to defeat a Hardware Firewall OR a Software Firewall, but I don't know how to defeat both at the same time.

-Duane

[ctn|chrisw]

I like tiny personal firewall

[MonKeyRum]

Originally posted by DuaneJeffers
Also Zone Alarms doesn't (at least the free version doesn't) tell you when an attack is in progress AND it doesn't let you know what the IP address is from the Incoming connection.

I have the latest free version and am able to see the IP address's in the logs

[General Geoff]

Originally posted by Rocker
.... yeah...so you can make a hardware firewall with software now?

Hardware firewall implies dedicated hardware for use as a firewall, i.e. a physical piece of machinery between your computer and the internet. Typical hardware firewalls are consumer-oriented routers such as a Linksys BEFSR41. In addition to providing the PPPoE connection required for most broadband ISPs, it also acts as a DHCP server and a NAT server, which basically translates requests between internal network IP addresses and sends/receives them to and from one public IP address. As such, all ports are blocked by default; if someone on the outside attempts to do a portscan on your IP address, they'll get nothing because it's just a router. The problem with this is that occasionally you won't be able to do certain things, like DCC in IRC. In order to alleviate that, you can forward certain ports on the router so that the NAT server portion allows direct port requests to go through to a certain internal IP address from the public IP.

What I was suggesting was to create a firewall from an old machine. I've done it before. Basically you get an old machine (486 or a Pentium with maybe 16MB of RAM) and run floppyfw on it, which is a linux distribution that fits on a single floppy disk, and can be configured to do everything a consumer-oriented router does. Floppyfw, however, can be configured with highly advanced routing protocols as well as masquerading and other firewall techniques not employed by ready-made routers.

[MonKeyRum]

nice!!!

My worthless old computer just became useful.

Is there a place that describes how to do at that on the net, I'm too lazy to google and thought you might know of one off hand.

[beanboy89]

I have a software firewall(ZoneAlarm), and a hardware firewall(Linksys Router).

[fwgx]

Originally posted by MonKeyRum
nice!!!

My worthless old computer just became useful.

Is there a place that describes how to do at that on the net, I'm too lazy to google and thought you might know of one off hand.

If that's the case I doubt you have the ability to actually set it up at all.

[MonKeyRum]

Why doesn't sound that involved. some people have no faith.

[Myxomatosis]

Stuipd lady at tech support for Verizon a few months ago said not to have a firewall becuase they overlap, so to say, with the hardware ones. Hopefully as my next few upgrades I get a mobo with nForce 3.

[Smeggle]

I get full protection on ZA free ..I never let software Auto-Update anyway ..also the only thing xtra really you get is the hacker look up feature and all that will do is trace back to the last ip ...so if there proxied well enough you can't find em.

I use summit else for that

Still, I am installing a satelite broadband system soon so a new router is on the cards...

Any recommends I'd be interested...?

[Myxomatosis]

Only thing I don't like about Kerio is that it has no place where it tells me traffic summed up into "XXkb/s" for upload and download.

[DuaneJeffers]

Yes it does ....



And that is from the main window.

...

Also ... Zone Alarms Doesn't sit well with me. I used to be a HUGE advocate for them, telling everyone to use it and whatnot. Zone Alarms decided though that they were going to charge what others offered for free AND piss off every privacy advocate out there with their AutoUpdate AND the possibility that they were Spying on their users. When I heard about this, then I switched promptly because it didn't sit well with me. Now, Kerio has been running on my computer for a year and it is still solid.

-Duane

[k_rock923]

I used Kerio for a while. It was way bigger on system resources than zone alarm.

[Smeggle]

yeah I saw some of that stuff on zone alarm in another place I stroll about (nuff said - tis a dark world down there )

still like I say you have the option to turn of auto-update. also you can manually delete logs...evrey now and then I unistall/delete the file left over. clean the registry/re-install.
That cure's there history/error report system.

I also use 'Hacker Eliminator from time to time - handy when you get persistant git's like the silly feck who has been proxieing into the same server and hitting me with UDP's all week from the same I.P./and port - got pissed at whoever tonight - found there ass anyway - now for a bit of fun heh heh heh

check your shield here

http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2


Zone Alarm just passed and is the only one recommended by this place as of last time I checked

you may want to try his leak test...

http://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm

I know zone alarm build around may? passed must check this latest update....

I'll edit with result in a min



it'll do me




duh jpb instead of jpg - gawd my typing sometimes lol

[eleet-2k2]

A hardware firewall built into a router is always good too.

[Myxomatosis]

Wait, I think I just downloaded a really old school version of Kerio, beucase it doesnt look anything like your screenshot. What version are you using?

[Nevermind, believe it or not, I somehow download version 1.2. When I was victim of a ping attack, it did some much as not even notify me or block it.]

[The latest version is awesome, I like it! ]