Looking for a good firewall [free]

[steveum]

I Use Zone alarms i suggest it but like alomost all firewalls its sooo friggin annoying!!!!!

i wish i had one carefree firewall.

[philip]

Originally posted by VulcanRider: If you want to test how well it works, go to the Gibson Research site www.grc.com and click the ShieldsUP link. It runs a set of tests on your connection that will give you an idea of how vulnerable you are to attack.

Thanks for the link! My router and sygate firewall kept everything out [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Felix The Assassin]

Originally posted by steveum: I Use Zone alarms i suggest it but like alomost all firewalls its sooo friggin annoying!!!!! i wish i had one carefree firewall.

Try symantec! It's very passive, which I like. However, when it pops up in your face, you need to pay heed, because something is happening or attempting to happen.

On the Gibson site I'm not there, complete green (stealth) or blue (closed ports). Just the way I like it.

[VulcanRider]

Harkoliar -- basically you want your computer to be invisible. If somebody probes your machine you don't want them to get in, and it's even better if your machine doesn't send them any information at all. It sounds like you're close, but still have a few ports open that people could use to gain entry. The tricky part is figuring out if you actually need them for something, 'cause you might be running some program that requires them to be open.

AFA being 1 in a million, that doesn't protect you as much as you would think. There are script kiddies who scan large blocks of I.P. addresses, thousands at a time, looking for any that respond. Once they find one, they have pre-written utilities that probe for specific weaknesses. They don't care if you're a billion $$ company or a home user, you're nothing but an active I.P. address to them. That makes you a target.

If you've got an hour to kill, that WWW.GRC.COM site has a page describing a denial of service attack they got hit with 2 - 3 years ago. It does a good job of explaining how these script kiddy utilities work, and how some punk kid (did I say that out loud?) can take over your machine.

[Bozos of Bones]

I got Sygate, but I tested it and it showed that only one port is open, the rest are stealth. How do I regulate that one port(Report from ShieldsUP: One or more unspecified Distributed COM (DCOM) services are opened by Windows. The exact port(s) opened can change, since queries to port 135 are used to determine which services are operating where. As is the rule for all exposed Internet services, you should arrange to close this port to external access so that potential current and future security or privacy exploits can not succeed against your system.)?

[Harkoliar]

hmm... in fact.. i do use several programs that allow me to be in the net all the time. i only have one port open i think. so this is going to take time figuring out which one is open at all.

[Intrepid]

http://www.angryziber.com/ipscan/
shows just how easily ip addresses can be scanned for and open ports found, 1 in a million isn't such a small number