Whats the best free firewall?

Noobie_2

Grahawk, OK, so I’ve been a naughty boy and had a casual affair with the internet without any protection (and with little problem) – sure, maybe it’s in the interests of the anti-malware makers to hype the problems so we get worried and buy their products (and most ‘free’ products have an ‘even better’ version you can buy). But, as dave_london says, these days we may well not know we’ve got something lurking. At one time the big threat was a virus which would very obviously **** your pc. These days, the threats seem to be from malware which doesn’t want to **** your pc ‘cos it wants it up and running ‘as normal’ so it can spy on you / be used as a drone to launch DDOS attacks, etc, etc.

Maninblack – thanks for the ipcop link, I’ll be going back to that again (and again).

Dave_london - ta for the previx info – read the review and users’ comments. Any idea who they are and what information THEY collect from your pc? Why’s previx different from Spywareblaster or IE-Spyads (or whatever it is)? Also, any thoughts on how effective AV is against Trojans and the ‘need’ for specialist AT apps?

Peter_the_piper – any info re the router?

Cheers, guys

maninblack_3

If anyone needs any help with firewalls particulalrly ipcop then just ask and i will help, trust me ipcop is the best way to go

maninblack

peter_the_piper

Noobie,
I use an origo 7210 wireless modem/router. There are many other models and makes which do the job at least as well.Check out ebuyer.co for various makes and reasonable prices.
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/home/index.html?rb=3070717821&action=c2hvd2ZlYXR1cmVkX3N0b3Jlcw==&stid=8&

Noobie_2

Thanx maninblack & peter_the_piper, I'll be following those up.

BTW, I followed link re prevx (http://www1.prevx.com/corpinfo.asp - for company info, link on l.h.s. to Prevx Home (Free)) and the site and company certainly seems genuine.   Still a bit concerned about what info they collect but, if they're detecting & collecting info re 'zero day' outbreaks, it will certainly put them ahead, in terms of time, against other co.s

taxi97w

dave_london

The system requirements for previx are WinXP/2000 -

is there anything you could recommend for Win98?

dave_london

Hi Taxi - I'm sorry as far as i know Previx is currently the only free "host ips" system out there :-(

Dave_london - ta for the previx info – read the review and users’ comments. Any idea who they are and what information THEY collect from your pc? Why’s previx different from Spywareblaster or IE-Spyads (or whatever it is)? Also, any thoughts on how effective AV is against Trojans and the ‘need’ for specialist AT apps?

......more than welcome! i'm not sure about the personal info question - a good point but they mostly sell to businesses so are relatively reputable (i guess). A "host ips" system like Previx does not deal with spyware - there's lots of good free anti-s[yware products out there like "spybot" and "adaware".

What a host ips system does is sit in the background and examine closely the behavour of traffic coming into the PC through the firewall and then it watches what happens, so for example if a PC is running the "LSASS" service which is necessary for many legitimate functions to work then it looks at the way that "LSASS" behaves, the "Sasser" series of worms took advantage of flaws aka vulnerabilites within "LSASS" to get inside the machine that it was attacking.

The problem is that you could have a firewall running and something could still get in, in the past few years firewall manufacturers have been introducing "intrusion detection" functionality within their firewall products - host intrusion prevention systems take thjis one step further, pretty soon though most firewall manufacturers are expected to incorporate the new prevention technology.

Finally please don't be led into a false sense of security by Service pack 2, every time a step forward is made with security the bad guys manage to work out a way around it, for example a few flaws are already emerging http://www.finjan.com/company/newsroom/press_show.asp?press_release_id=165

My advice......get a decent "suite" of firewall, a/v, spam and spyware protection software - if you don't want to pay fot it then there are good free options, make sure that you spend time to ensure they are properly patched and make sure that MS auto updater is switched on as every month at least Microsoft releases a new patch to cover things it and the security community have found.

Hope that's of interest,
D

theloft

Always use Kerio

Can anyone help me to get rid of Kerio ? I have tried without success to update Kerio (Fran says always check for updates) and each time it tells me that my InstallShield is out of date, When I try to download an up to date InstallShield from Microsoft, I am told "access is denied". So I decided I would dump Kerio and go to ZoneAlarm, but I cannot delete the Kerio. When I go into Add/Remove Programs and click on Kerio, I just get the same message that my Install Shield is out of date. I have been going round in circles with this and as I am not a "techie", I need help.

Noobie_2

Dave, thanks for the explanation. Quickie: came across a reference to free intrusion detection software (IDS) [they didn’t state the name of it] on this site: http://www.techsupportalert.com/issues/al_current.htm

Is IDs the same as intrusion prevention software (IPS)?

dave_london

Hi,

I think perhaps they were talking about "Snort" or some other freeware IDS system - this is more for a network administrator than useful for a home user.

The difference between an intrusion detection and an intrusion prevention system is slight - the IDS spots something happening but just logs it, the IPS system spots it happening and then goes one step further and blocks it from damaging your machine.
However given the speed of attacks these days it is much more prudent to prevent an attack than to detect it as you would be infected and being told about it may be irrelevent as you would probably be feeling it's effect - SQL Slammer for example had the theoretical ability to scan all ip addresses on the internet in 15 minutes.

Noobie_2

Thanks, Dave - yup, IPS sounds better than IDS! Think I'll have a further look at Prevx.