Fire Wall

[Katran 0]

I read in a nother topic and I think that it was Lama8 who asked this question "what fire wall to use?".

At the same time I knew that I my self need a new one. So please any help will be much thanked for:

 

1.What fire wall? hope it is free well free ones have the advantage

2. what defence does it offer?

3.Link were can it be downloaded?

[Guest gogoblender]

WE have a router which has a built in firewall.

But I've been using zonealarm now for years.

It's free and is still supposed to be one of the best ones areound.

 

gogo

[Schot 407]

Ah good question Katran. At the moment I'm only using xp firewall. So far as I've seen other software firewalls seem to be a bit intrusive. Zone Alarm looks like a really great firewall and I've seen how it works on gogo' pc. It's very effective at preventing connections coming in ad going out but I found it a bit too controling. For myself I'm reluctant because of the many online games I've played that require every little bit of my bandwidth. Especially when playing fps/shooter games. Actually, I sometimes turn off my xp firewall when playing online games just to be sure my firewall isn't slowing me down.

 

I do virus scans and spyware scans regularly and I rarely have any intrusions at all so I haven't felt the need to install a different firewall. I'm using a router though so that probably helps a bit.

 

Do you really need a different firewall? Are you finding that you get a lot of virus' and spyware?

[Guest gogoblender]

Using zone alarm can be more work...but it's worth it

*knock on wood*

never had a virus, and never had bad luck....

for almost four years now with my rig

*knocks on wood again*

Go Zone alarm!

 

gogo

[Ankhanu 0]

I don't use one.

Well, that's not entirely true; my router has one built in, but otherwise, I don't have one installed and I've disabled the XP firewall. If I'm somewhere that I think it might be wise to have it on, I will activate the XP firewall, but in general, they just use up some system resources

[Katran 0]

When I put my WiFi conection I found some new love for the internet but I didn't put any protection. In the first month alone I had hits from every spywear out there . Normaly the empire"Me" struke back and wiped the flore with them all but the fealing and spend time on cleaning up was not nice. I do scan every day and take out anything that looks odd even by a mile away.

The one that I had had expired its use and I am left now with my active every day scans on the PC. They don't take time and even when I put a new firewall I will still be doing them better safe then sorry

But the real thing is to know what is out there and what to use what is the best for free. There are over 200 members of D.A.R.K. Matters and if only 20 post here I and every one else that needs a good firewall will have a good place to get some pointers.

 

 

P.S.: Gogo thanks for the Show all button for smileys I got to use the Star Wars finally

[Guest gogoblender]

ahh, yeah, I forgot about windows xp firewall.

heh, yeah I use that too

plus zonealarm

plus the physical firewall built inta the router

we're talkin SECURITY!

 

 

gogo

[danwilliams 0]

I have a firewalled router, but also use protection from windows firewall (representation of windows firewall shown in picture below)

 

and I also use McAfee personal firewall plus

 

although used to use norton until norton antivirus got infected by a virus and it spread it to every file on my compuer when it did a scan. was shocking to see 400,000+ viruses in one virus scan!

 

[Guest gogoblender]

Norton is weird and sketchy

REgarding firewalls it was the one that had the most conflicts with any progs I've ever installed

Baaaaaaaad NOrton

 

gogo

 

p.s. fer me anyway

[Llama8 8]

I run my AV in the morning while I'm getting ready for work, but I'd still like to have a firewall (never had a virus (yet)). IIRC our router has a firewall ('though I'm not sure if it's on).

[Yarasa 0]

using Agnitum Outpost firewall ( http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost/ ) + NOD32 virus protection on one computer

 

using McAfee internet Security for the other one

 

both combinations working great so far.

I used to have Norton internet security. I never had a problem with it but it was slowing the system down a bit.

 

Don't believe in Windows firewall at all. Is it doing something:) Picture exactly explanes everything

[bhj 24]

I think norton is kinda ok

 

running

Norton SystemWorks Premier 2005

Norton Internet Security Anti Spywhere Ed 2005

 

the firewall is at the top Sadly the antivirus is not But with a bit of tweeking you can get it up there

[Aurora 2]

We have a firewalled router and we use Zone Alarm too - it can get annoying but its free and seems to work so.....

 

[Incendareous 0]

This topic interests me cause networking and security are what I'm studying at uni My advice to katran is to use zonealarm or another free reliable one is tiny personal firewall. Both provide excellent protection on a per system level. People that use nat/pat routers have by default a built in firewall, and so dont "have" to run personal firewalls... Basically a router takes one public ip address and shares it with many private addresses within the home lan. When a computer in the lan requests some information from an external site the router takes note of the machine requesting the data and where its request is going to. the router then waits for a return packet from the "noted" destination to route back to the requesting computer... so what this meen is that unsolicted packets of data ie 99% of all forms of internet attack are unsolicted packets attemting to gain access to exposed ports, cant get in. when a packet hits a router the router looks in its routing table to see who requested that packet when there is no entry in the routing table the packet gets dropped and never makes it inside the network. Thus routers are very cool But this doesnt meen you shouldnt use a personal firewall... Nowadays our computers are more often infected by trojan style adware and spyware, typically this happens when you download and install trial/shareware etc or almost definately in "freeware". These programs typically use system resources collect various forms of information and attempt to transmit that information back to base so to speak... This is where personal firewalls become essential. Programs like zonelalarm etc while being somewhat noisy and annoying are also invaluable in showing you a trojan horse program dialing back home. when the programs attempt to communicate you are prompted asking if its ok for the program to send data out. I cant tell you how many times I have installed something then had zonealarm jump up and let me know I just made a mistake...

So yeah long post short I reccomend that everyone use a personal firewall even when behind nat/pat routers and especially if using wireless

[Cth 0]

I have a router and use ipchains definitions on my machine, which runs gentoo. As a rule I usually disable most system services that run on linux machines by default, and change the default ports of those that I keep running. Nessus is a must have for linux security as well, it really helps you lock things down. Sometimes I have a honeypot or two on the go, but they never get any action

 

For OS X, make sure you have little snitch running, this will prevent programs from 'phoning home' or contacting outside parties to deliver information or anything along those lines.

[Guest gogoblender]

good posts guys

and Incendarerious you make good arguments for always keeping my firewall on which lately I've been neglecting to do due to Guild Wars.

 

gogo