Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Free Windows firewalls found better than commercial ones

(1/7) > >>

Rohit:
I know many regulars here (including me) are looking for a good firewall solution, so this article might help :)

Firewall protection fantasy doused

Free firewalls are better than their paid-for cousins. That is the surprising conclusion of a test of desktop firewalls by security researchers.

Researchers at David Matousec's matousec.com carried out tests on 21 leading products using 26 assessment programs known as "leak" testers. These simulated a total of 77 test attacks on firewalls, configured using both out-of-the-box and optimal security settings. Each firewall was then awarded points based on its ability to pass each leak test in both modes.

The only two products to achieve a rating of "excellent" turned out to be free-to-use software, the Comodo Personal Firewall v2.3, and the Jetico Personal Firewall v2.0 beta.

(snip) At the very bottom of the list in 21st place scoring a resounding zero, came Microsoft's own firewall ...

(snip) The researchers also hit the products with a "fake protection revealer" (FPR) designed to catch out software that had been optimised to pass some security tests without necessarily offering real-world protection. Only one product fell seriously foul of this test, Outpost Firewall Pro 4.0 ...
--- End quote ---

nudone:
very interesting.

i was holding back about commenting futher on the comodo firewall (i'd recently installed it after reading a discussion elsewhere on this forum) but this appears to be good place to say my piece now.

after a few hours of my machine running, all of my programs that were connected to the net would crash. so that's AOL active virus shield, spyware terminator, comodo firewall, utorrent and emule. further, the fonts would vanish from windows/buttons and a very weird black shadow appears around the text of my desktop icons.

obviously, i thought my machine must be infected with something. all scans have so far not revealed anything to be worried about. the troubling thing is that this pattern of crashing behaviour is consistent when using the comodo firewall. since uninstalling it i've not had the problem return. i have been unable to reinstall zone alarm (which i was previously using) so i reverted back to using the windows inbuilt firewall - which i think i'll have to avoid after seeing Rohit's above post.

of course, maybe it's simply the combination of programs i have running that is causing the problem - what else can i assume. but for the moment, comodo firewall sounded so good to me but it simply became a disaster.

Carol Haynes:
Seems a bit unfair to lump Windows Firewall in the list since it doesn't even pretend to block outgoing traffic !

Rohit:
... the troubling thing is that this pattern of crashing behaviour is consistent when using the comodo firewall. since uninstalling it i've not had the problem return. ...
-nudone (December 07, 2006, 07:49 AM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks for this feedback, nudone.

After reading the above article I promptly uninstalled my old Sygate Personal Firewall and installed Comodo. If I start experiencing crashes, I would know what to blame them on.

Seems a bit unfair to lump Windows Firewall in the list since it doesn't even pretend to block outgoing traffic !-Carol Haynes (December 07, 2006, 07:56 AM)
--- End quote ---

That's interesting, Carol. I never used the default Windows firewall, so I didn't know it blocked only incoming traffic. I guess Microsoft implemented this feature so as not to confuse casual (non computer-savvy) users.

mitzevo:
Hmm, so what does that mean then..? Outpost is a lier?! I might go and take a look at Comodo..  :huh:

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page