Which is Better?

[titus12]

How does WinXP Home's firewall compair to Zone Alarm free firewall?

Thank yopu;
David

 

[Jane Colman]

XP's firewall only blocks incoming, whereas ZoneAlarm gives you control over
both incoming and outgoing activity.

I use ZoneAlarm on XP.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

How does WinXP Home's firewall compair to Zone Alarm free firewall?

Thank yopu;
David

WinXP's built-in firewall is adequate at stopping incoming attacks,
and hiding your ports from probes. What WinXP SP2's firewall does not
do, is provide an important additional layer of protection by informing
you about any Trojans or spyware that you (or someone else using your
computer) might download and install inadvertently. It doesn't monitor
out-going network traffic at all, other than to check for IP-spoofing,
much less block (or at even ask you about) the bad or the questionable
out-going signals. It assumes that any application you have on your
hard drive is there because you want it there, and therefore has your
"permission" to access the Internet. Further, because the Windows
Firewall is a "stateful" firewall, it will also assume that any incoming
traffic that's a direct response to a Trojan's or spyware's out-going
signal is also authorized.

ZoneAlarm or Kerio are much better than WinXP's built-in firewall,
in that they do provide that extra layer of protection, are much more
easily configured, and have free versions readily available for
downloading. Even the commercially available Symantec's Norton Personal
Firewall provides superior protection, although it does take a heavier
toll of system performance then do ZoneAlarm or Kerio.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

 

[MAP]

How does WinXP Home's firewall compair to Zone Alarm free firewall?

Thank yopu;
David

The very last sentence of this article sadly is no longer true.




From www.spywareinfo.com

I promised myself a while back not to go on another anti-Microsoft rant,
that I would write calmly about any goofs they make. It has been a hard
promise to keep at times. And now, I must break that promise. If I don't
rant about this, I will burst at the seams.

The function of a software firewall is simple. It allows the user to control
the computer's access to other computers. To do that, it blocks attempts to
send unauthorized data out over a network, as well as the attempts of other
computers to send data to the protected computer. A proper firewall allows
data into or out of the computer, only when the user gives the firewall
permission to do so. I think most people will agree that this is an accurate
description of the proper function of a software firewall.

So I am left to wonder if the Microsoft programmers who designed the Windows
Firewall have lost their freakin minds. While the Windows Firewall will
block network access like any other firewall, the settings which determine
whether or not an attempt to access the network is permitted is stored in
the registry. Any piece of software is allowed to edit that part of the
registry and give itself permission to send or receive data over the
network.

There are several viruses, worms and spyware programs that edit the registry
settings for the Windows Firewall. Even if the user discovers a virus
infection and cleans it successfully, that computer can be reinfected at any
time, if the virus edited the firewall settings. Many network worms can
infect a computer if it discovers certain unsecured network ports. It
happened to me once, when I turned off my firewall and forgot to turn it
back on.

Changes to a firewall's settings should be possible only through the
firewall program's interface. Those changes should be saved into an
encrypted file, which cannot be altered by any other program. Those settings
should not EVER be written to the registry, where they can be altered by any
other program running on the PC. It takes only the smallest shred of common
sense to realize this.

Where was the common sense when they were creating the Windows Firewall?
This is like hiring security guards to keep gate crashers away from a party
but allowing the guests to write their own invitations.

But wait, there's more!

Someone discovered recently that the Windows Firewall interface won't even
tell the user about an opened port, if the registry entry granting it
permission has a malformed name. Not only can a malicious programmer give
his evil creation permission to bypass the firewall, he can hide the fact
that he's done it!

It is boneheaded mistakes like this which make it difficult to use Windows
safely. God help us all when Microsoft begins to make its own antivirus
software. The only reason Microsoft's antispyware program works well
probably is because Microsoft didn't write it.

 

[Wesley Vogel]

No, it has been bloated up, I'm sure. I uninstalled MSAS in Jan 2005.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Guest]

"Seagate Firewall **v5** ( Free) got good reviews in PC World Magazin for
blocking outgoing stuff .

 

[Leythos]

WinXP's built-in firewall is adequate at stopping incoming attacks,
and hiding your ports from probes.

I disagree- the last new Dell machine I setup, factory default, had 20+
exceptions entered in the Firewall Exception list, as a default.

That type of change/changes should require approval from the user, and
it didn't.

That goes back to the way that applications can change the MS Firewall
settings without the user knowing about it - at least without the user
knowing that a firewall change has been inserted in the exception list.

 

[MBIEnt]

I currently use Zone Alarm on a 98 machine and love it, but when I
installed ZA on my XP Pro machine, the complexity of XP versus 98
greatly compounded the problem of training ZA. It seemed every XP
process wanted to have Internet access, at one time or another. Not
knowing what a lot of these processes were, what they'd do, or why they
needed access to the Internet, I simply 'trusted' that they were
legitimate XP processes on a mission to serve me better and told ZA to
give them one-time access. After awhile, these persistent
interruptions got the best of me and I uninstalled ZA, going with the
XP firewall.

Now, after reading all of the comments about the differences between
the two, I'm ready to go back to ZA, BUT, is there a knowledgeable
resource, that a neophyte can rely on, where one can get reliable
guidance regarding training ZA as to which XP processes to allow
permament Internet access and those to permanently block?

Don't want to horn in on the original requestor, but do think it is
something he would want to know, if he choses ZA over the XP firewall.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I disagree- the last new Dell machine I setup, factory default, had 20+
exceptions entered in the Firewall Exception list, as a default.

That's may be the standard for Dell's customized OEM configuration, but
it's not a Windows default.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin