I'm a boring t**t

[Tom]

Well, seeing as I'm spending Saturday night in instead of getting drunk and slapped by girls, I've never seen this before. Why would they implement something like that?

 

[Whipped]

What the hell were you searching for to get that?

 

[Trem]

What the hell were you searching for to get that?

'Cameramen with big willies'

 

[Draylor]

Heh

One of the "viruses of the week" a year or so back used Google to search for email addresses to spam rather than the more normal trick at the time of searching the victims harddisk for mails/documents containing addresses.

You got lucky and triggered Googles check for this, no big deal. Adding the check cut down on both the amount of virus spam generated and the number of searches Google were seeing from this.

 

[Tom]

I was actually searching for 'does zonealarm make my computer slow' or something. Just wondered if it was worth replacing it with a bit of hardware instead, but it seems its not really worth the hassle.

Not now I've just paid my tax bill, and aer skint.

 

[Tom]

Vsmon.exe from Zonealarm is taking about 70MB of my RAM.

Its my RAM, and I want it back. It really slows down Steam and other stuff.

Is there a mega cheap really good hardware firewall thingy that I could buy that means I can uninstall the software firewall? Any recommendations?

 

[xane]

Is there a mega cheap really good hardware firewall thingy that I could buy that means I can uninstall the software firewall? Any recommendations?

I doubt you can get a hardware firewall that will preserve the best feature of software firewalls like ZoneAlarm, that being the ability to block and detect on a per program basis.

If you don't want a program-based firewall, just use the built-in Windows one.

 

[SheepCow]

If you don't want a program-based firewall, just use the built-in Windows one.

The built-in Windows firewall does per-program blocking too

 

[Ch3tan]

I use windows firewall when I'm playing games. Zonealarm the rest of the time.

 

[Tom]

I doubt you can get a hardware firewall that will preserve the best feature of software firewalls like ZoneAlarm, that being the ability to block and detect on a per program basis.

If you don't want a program-based firewall, just use the built-in Windows one.

I thought about that, but then I ran the www.grc.com test and it identified my computer very easily, with XP firewall on and ZA off.

If I got a hardware firewall, then it would stop everything coming in - bar virii and trojans through webpages and email? Is that right? Then all I'd need to do would be to put XP firewall on, and stop dodgy outgoing things?

 

[SheepCow]

Oh dear, grc.

How exactly did it "[identify] my computer very easily"

 

[Dommers]

I got one with the BT router

 

[TdC]

If I got a hardware firewall, then it would stop everything coming in - bar virii and trojans through webpages and email? Is that right? Then all I'd need to do would be to put XP firewall on, and stop dodgy outgoing things?

yeah more or less.

Tom, on a personal computer you're looking to see something like this (see attached file), or possibly the same, but then blue.

Just to clarify a bit, your computer -or "a" computer- will always be traceable on the interweb due to the nature of how things talk to each other there. I said "a" computer because your ISP may direct all external traffic through a gateway that pretends that it is actually your computer. Such a thing being called a proxy, and depends on how your ISP does things.

To clarify Mr Gibson's green, blue and red little buttons, he just tries to talk to your pc. Red meaning he managed it, blue meaning your pc told him to fo, and green meaning he couldn't set up a connection. Green being the coolest according to him. Which is more or less true, because bright people can learn alot about your pc (for example what OS you are running) from the manner in which it tells them to bugger off. Now some really bright people deliberately allow this and send misleading information to would-be intruders through manipulation of certain aspects of their TCP/IP transmissions but regular folk like thee and me prefer just to pretend to be a hole in the web. Aka green, or "stealthed", which is a scary word for "not responding to incoming transmissions in any way at all".

Now a firewall isn't the holy grail tbh, because of the manner such things work. It's all well and good that your personal firewall can selectivly block programs from connecting to the interweb, but what about you innocently browsing pr0n? here's where possible nastyness raises it's ugly mug. What happens if an evil pr0n webby redirects your handy IE (which is handy, because it does all kinds of things so you don't have to, like installs programs and somesuch. also called user-friendly. also called shit, by me) to some evilsite causing it to download and run some evilproggy as Administrator? because you *ARE* administrator aren't you, you lazy windows user.

your firewall isn't going to bat an eyelid at this behaviour, though your virusscanner might. unless evilproggy tells it, as administrator, to turn itself off ofc, but I shouldn't harp about such things. also your firewall may allow bi-directional communication that you have initiated, which is a good thing in general. This is called being stateful, and basically works along the lines of you starting a conversation with some server on the interweb and the firewall allowing that server to talk back to you. So evilproggy runs in IE and uploads your credit card info to evilserver because IE handilly remembered it for you. your firewall isn't going to care one bit. </worstcasescenarioscarytalk>

now why am I harping? well, the best possible safety compromise is running a decent firewall, a decent virus scanner and -most of all- paying attention to what you're doing. each one, or even each two on their own are worthless, but the three together should keep your poota and your pr0n stash about as safe as you can make it.

 

[Tom]

*scratches head and plucks banjo strings*

I've got all them thar green boxes, just wondering if I could reclaim some of the RAM that ZA likes to take.

 

[TdC]

well, I'd not recommend uninstalling it unless you're going to run something in it's place. If you don't leave your computer on for extended periods of time (ie you turn it off and you're offline) a software firewall could suffice, but if you leave it on for yonks between reboots you really should run a hardware firewall and a software one imo. No need to make things easy for the kiddies aye.

also hardware firewalls won't break the bank these days, and usually the people who make them can update their firmware several times a year (well, they make it, you update it).

 

[Tom]

So whats a good cheapo one?

 

[SheepCow]

Well I use the Windows Firewall and my router blocks some of the more obvious ports from entering or leaving the network. Things like the MS file sharing ports and UPnP are blocked from entering/leaving the local network at the router.

Never had any problems with the builtin firewall, seems to do its job just fine.

 

[nath]

Imo the best thing to do is have an external router - i.e. not a USB modem. That way your PC isn't directly connected to the net. Sure, if you get a virus then it's going to initiate the connection and the router will let it through, but any brute-force hacks will be rejected by the router itself. By default, they're set to reject every inbound packet unless a PC inside the network initiated the connection or if you've set up some port forwarding.

A decent virus scanner, a nice netgear router and some common sense > *.

 

[Tom]

ok now I'm really confused.

You have to remember that while I'm a world renowned expert on everything, that doesn't include computers.

Can someone point at a thing thats cheap and say 'buy that' please.

 

[SheepCow]

Cheap shit:
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...Id=11177&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11177,50010

getting more expensive:
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...Id=11177&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11177,50542
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.asp...geMode=1&NavigationKey=11177,4294960268,50468

Depends if you want wireless and if you're after a known brand. I have the Netgear DG834 but I've got the wireless version.

edit: just look on ebuyer and dabs, you want a router that has a firewall (hard to find one that doesn't I expect) and builtin modem (watch out for cable routers and ones without modems).

 

[Tom]

nah I'm not interested in wireless, I have a big old cable running under the floorboards that works fine

I refuse to use Dabs as they fecked up my last order big-style, and I almost ended up with 2 expensive printers. Can you recommend one from Scan?

 

[Ch3tan]

Look on ebay as well, lots of routers going cheap on there, and new as well.