Zone Alarm 5 Beta Review 34
An anonymous reader writes "ZoneAlarm is getting ready to announce version 5 of its security software firewall, ZoneAlarm. Though there are a few changes that are presently available on the new beta, this review mentions that there are still many security issues to resolve. Grc.com scan reveals that ZoneAlarm Beta 5 failed to close port 25 and fails to give useful information to the user about possible security services being shut off."
Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just my 2 cents.
Wonder if Zonealarm has addressed the issue that was brought forth about version 4, which is that it's hook into the tcp/ip stack could be hijacked by malware.
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO, we need more guys like him.
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:2, Informative)
That aside, I don't like Gibsons personality. The guy just rubs me the wrong way. I guess I shouldn't let that reflect on my opinion of his website, but I'm only human.
I'm still waiting for his.. what were they called? nano-packets? The ability to portscan an entire systems in a second.
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:2)
Apparently, he thinks asynchronous sockets are so neat, he calls them "NanoProbe".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember the time he 'invented' TCP SYNcookies six years after they were actually created? [theregister.co.uk]. To be fair to him, his SYNcookies proposal wasn't the same as what had already been suggested - his had some pretty major omissions that made it unworkable.
Or the time he predicted the end of the Internet with the introduction of raw sockets into Windows XP [vmyths.com], or earlier because of Code Red [theregister.co.uk]?
If one is supposed to be doing a firewall test then a *proper* port scanning utility such as the excellent nmap [insecure.org] should be used, rather than a tool on the website of a known netkook.
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sorry if you're getting modded as Troll, cause we aren't. Mods need to learn what Trolling is
I'd mod you up if I could
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:3, Funny)
Trolling is:
Overblown, but helpful. (Score:3, Insightful)
When you are new to computing it is difficult to believe that Windows is as vulnerable as it is. A novice keeps saying, "Microsoft is a big, successful company, why would they be so self-destructive?"
It's true that Gibson is amazingly overblown at times.
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:5, Insightful)
He is one of those people who you have to adjust for, and if you don't you'll just miss the point of what he's trying to say. Once you do, what he says makes a whole lot of sense and he does not come off as a light-weight tech by any means.
His main focus, for many years, seems to be this;
Hype it up a bit for effect.
Important: Tell the nit-pickers to #uck off.
The hype rubs many geeks the wrong way since we want to know the real details and with those details we can figure out for ourselves if something is important or not.
When his errors or lack of total completeness is brought up, he drops into #uck off mode. Yep, he is a bit arrogant, though most techies are. He does have an ego and will snipe back if sniped...so?
I have friends who I don't agree with, who do things I don't like, though if it's in character I let it pass; "Jack is being Jack".
Hammer Steve Gibson when he deserves it, though consider that most of the time he's not so horribly off the mark when you consider his audience and basic attitude.
This is an example from GRC.com (Score:2, Informative)
access to any Unix sockets programmer.
Beyond their use for supporting simple "ping" and "traceroute" commands, the original Berkeley designers intended Raw Sockets to be used for Internet protocol research purposes only. Because they fully appreciated the inherent danger of abuse of Raw Sockets, they deliberately denied Raw Socket access to any applications not running with maximum Unix "root" privileges. User-level applications were thus prevented from
Re:This is an example from GRC.com (Score:2)
Re:This is an example from GRC.com (Score:2, Insightful)
If he had flamed MS for their poor out-of-box user configuration, he would have had 100% of the techie world behind him.
Re:This is an example from GRC.com (Score:4, Informative)
If he had flamed MS for their poor out-of-box user configuration, he would have had 100% of the techie world behind him.
He is constantly harping on Microsoft's poor-out-of-the-box configuration, it's just the way he goes about it that seems a bit Tabloid-ish.
For example, his tool called "Shoot The Messenger" simply turns the Messenger Service off, which should be its default setting on XP Home since the average user doesn't need it and it only gets used to annoy. By comparison, TechTV hosts just regularly remind people how to turn off the service by going through the Control Panel. Same net result, the same flags in the registry get changed no matter what way you attack it in the GUI.
Instead of calling on Microsoft to make changes, he writes assembly-coded programs to do the changes and convinces people that there's such a gaping hole in their systems that need to be fixed by his magic bullets. For him, security is a side interest... his real business is built around SpinRite, the definitive hard-drive testing tool.
So, really, he's in line with the main stream community in his beliefs on security, it's just that he has an unusual way to promote them which is more aimed at the "dumb public" than the secuirity elite.
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's tough to write good material for a mass audience. I've had to oversimplify my non-technical work [blogspot.com] to keep it accessible. (Detailed criticism welcome even if rude).
Where I think grc.com does readers a disservice is by steering them away from good products. Look at the flexbeta review that marked products "Failed" in red letters because they closed ports as opposed to dropping packets, or because they answered on port 113. Both of those are perfectly valid policy choices.
It's good that Gibson highl
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:2)
Re:Wait, do we respect Gibson now? (Score:1)
Farewell to "Fair well". (Score:3, Funny)
First, maybe we should not be accepting advice from journalists who don't know their own language well.
Second, I read the ZoneAlarm 4 review and it didn't seem to uncover anything that would cause someone to stop using ZoneAlarm.
I suppose a fair well is a deep hole filled with water at a fair.
Fare: To progress or perform adequately, especially in difficult circumstances.
Farewell to Flexbeta.
Re:Farewell to "Fair well". (Score:1)
So it's a typo. Yes, it's a typo. It happens. Sometimes when I'm typing the same thing happens: I hear the sound of the word in my head and associate it with a certain spelling. Sometimes I don't associate in correct context.
Reviewed previous article, found it misleading. (Score:2)
Also, I reviewed the previous article, and found it misleading. Remember that a Slashdot comment is not a complete record of what someone thinks, it is only an indication.
Also, farewell is correct: Farewell: Interjection used to say good-bye.
Re:Reviewed previous article, found it misleading. (Score:1)
Farewell: Fare can mean several things. None of those meanings apply to the sentence. Let's move onto the correctly used word.
Fairwell: Fair, in the context of the sentence, means Moderately good; acce
Re:Reviewed previous article, found it misleading. (Score:1)
Re:Reviewed previous article, found it misleading. (Score:1)
Re:Farewell to "Fair well". (Score:2)
Missing one key and hitting another is a typo. Missing one word and typing another is something entirely different, something which the author of the article should have caught, and barring that, the editor.
Finally, there i
Re:Farewell to "Fair well". (Score:1)
* Obviously I misspoke in the PP.
Kerio (Score:5, Informative)
No explanation from the software, no warning, and damned difficult to figure out what to to correct it.
There were other odd issues that resolved themselves after uninstalling.
I tried Kerio [kerio.com] because they took over an awesome product (TinyPF 4)
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kerio is the nicest firewall software I have ever used.
Includes pop-up blocking, application level permissions with MD5, and is very configurable. Nice looking (very important to style conscious surfers;). Low resource usage.
ZoneAlarm is gonna have to knock my socks off to get me to switch.
p.s. Has anyone tried TinyPF 5 ?? Im wondering how it compares.
Re:Kerio (Score:2, Informative)
Kerio PF 2.15 is the best rule based firewall I have used.
Tiny PF is a full blown sandbox and firewall.
Apparently has a steep learning curve.
Re:Kerio (Score:4, Interesting)
The application level firewall is completely configurable, you can control which TCP & UDP ports each individual application can use and which it can't.
It can be complicated if you want to dig into it, but the default setup is perfectly acceptable if you just want to install and forget about it.
ZoneAlarm trashed the TCP/IP stack on my home network, preventing Internet Connection Sharing, which is inexcusable. Disabling or uninstalling ZA does not resolve the problem you have to hack the registry and reset the stack (NETSH IP RESET) to recover the damage.
If you google you'll find hundreds of people with hosed machines thanks to ZA. Firewalls and virus scanners are products I do expect to behave 100% reliably and when you lose that trust you are going to have a hard time winning me back. So despite a few quality versions in the early days, ZA have more than likely lost me as a customer for life.