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Thread: Firewalls acting as spies

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    HEXUS webmaster Steve's Avatar
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    Firewalls acting as spies

    The place you'd look for a piece of software spying on your would be in your firewall app, right? When you start to think about it, however, it becomes clear that a Firewall is an ideal app to do some snooping. It sits there, knowing about every application that tries to access the network and all packets of network bound data go through it. It's a surpise that no firewalls are sending any data back to base then, isn't it? Oh wait, some are...
    Now, the handsomely-named Mr Cringely has revealed that a colleague of his at Infoworld noticed that Zone Alarm 6.0 was sneakily sending off data to four different servers. Cringely says that Zone Labs (acquired by Checkpoint in March of 2004) at first denied the activity for a couple of months before deciding the software had a "bug" even though, as he points out, "the instructions to contact the servers were set out in the program’s XML code."
    [The Inquirer]
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    Gordy Gordy's Avatar
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    I noticed this before when running zone alarm along with another firewall.

    Didnt really bother me tbh

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    iMc
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    Ahh Zone Alarm, the wonderful piece of software BT Broadband now supply with most of it's packages... well the free version at least (you can pay £3.50pm for the free version if your on Option 1 and really silly).

    Also the very program that likes to cause the infamous error code 65 problem. Sometimes even after being uninstalled.

    Piece of crap in my humble opinion.
    HEXUS|iMc

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    Raging Bull DeludedGuy's Avatar
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    Get yourself a real Firewall, Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2005

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    Lucca Der Tuv (LCD) mart_haj86's Avatar
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    Sygate

    Too bad Symantec has brought out Sygate, that was simply the best free firewall out there, and as far as i know it didnt report anything back to base.

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    Senior Member kasavien's Avatar
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    well i won't be using zone alarm any more, its been a right pain in the ass lately, the update on my dads computer didn't work properly and zone alarm wouldn't run as a consequence. Now you would think that if you uninstalled the damned program all would be fine but oh no, no internet access for my dad stupid zone alarm blocking the connection. But anyway he's getting a new computer soon. I suppose theres always windows firewall...

    Does anyone have any good recommendations for firewalls, free or otherwise?

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    Quote Originally Posted by DeludedGuy
    Get yourself a real Firewall, Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2005
    With anti virus, anti spam and anti spyware thrown is as an added bonus!
    "In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penises, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship."

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    Lucca Der Tuv (LCD) mart_haj86's Avatar
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    thats all very well, having all these things packaged together but me thinks it goes along with the old saying, "jack of all trades, master of none"... maybe im just a bit too fussy when it comes to PC security..hmmmmm

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    I have been using the Agnitum firewall for a month now and it is great! Works on Server 2003 which is a bonus!

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    Theoretical Element Spud1's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DeludedGuy
    Get yourself a real Firewall, Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2005

    Erm while zone alarm is a bit pants imho (never liked it, system hog with a clunky interface that really used to get on my nerves, a bit like norton's effort but not quite as bad ) PC-Cillin is not much better as a firewall..As an antivirus solution I think PC-Cillin is great, but for firewalls...combined with the SPI one in my router I use the windowsSP2 firewall..works fine tbh.

    It's a good point though, a firewall would be the perfect spyware. In today's world almost everyone who has a PC with broadband wants one whether they need it or not (windows XPSP2 firewall is perfectly good enough tho tbh) so lots of people will have htem installed, and since they analyse every packet pretty much, they could glean whatever they wanted from it.

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    Yeah, I'm a ZoneAlarm user as this really grinds my gears. Plus the fact that the bastard thing won't actually remember the settings I give to certain programs. I'm loosing my temper with it and I plan to move over to Kerio Firewall which is highly recommended by forum members over at SFFTech/Sudhian.

    The only snag is that it's going to take a lot of configuring and currently I don't have time. I'll look into it and get back to all.

    [URL]http://www.kerio.com[URL]

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