I’m getting broadband in the next week or so, and am rather alarmed at the references to people NEEDING a firewall. As a home user, with nothing more than a few MP3’s, a handful of Excel docs and 10gb of porn (joke! it’s only 5) I can’t see why someone would want to cause harm to little old me . . . what’s the average hacker’s logic in grabbing a random PC and causing havoc?
And assuming I really do need a firewall, which one should I get hold of, and how should I go about installing it? Does a firewall stop you from doing anything cool yourself, or does it just stop people delving into your PC’s insides?
There are many different personal firewalls available, and different opinions as to which is the best. The two I have seen the best reviews of are ZoneAlarm and BlackIce Defender. The former is very popular, has a completely free version and very easy to use–it sits happily blocking intrusion attempts and asking you every time an application on your computer attempts to access the internet (you can set it to always give permission for software such as your web browser). Unfortunately I have no direct experience of BlackIce–I’ve heard it’s more advanced and customisable, although less user-friendly for the majority of users, but cannot confirm this. There are also many other alternatives out there.
I would happily recommend ZoneAlarm as a practical solution given that you’re not protecting high-sensitivity information and are unlikely to be the major focus of crackers/hackers (I’m steering clear of that semantic firestorm). It is easy to install (just download and run an executable file)and to configure. You can download it, or read other user reviews, at [download.com], and read user reviews of other [similar products].
I’ll add to the recommendation for ZoneAlarm. BlackIce is said to be quite good as well. I haven’t used it in a long time, and IIRC the major feature which it lacked compared to ZoneAlarm was the ability to restrict outgoing as well as incoming traffic. With ZoneAlarm, you have to explicitly grant applications on your computer access to the Internet, which prevents spyware from phoning home.
On the more general point of the OP on why you need a firewall in the first place, I’d point out that a firewall is useful not only in protecting yourself from the world but in protecting the world from you. Many crackers want to gain control of your machine not because they care about your stuff but because they can then use your machine to mount denial of service attacks elsewhere. All of the large-scale DoS attacks have been perpetrated using “zombies”, machines compromised and set up with trojan horse applications over a long period of time and then called into action all at once to attack the target. The retaliation against machines involved in DoS attacks is likely to become more and more intense so save yourself the trouble now by making sure the bad guys aren’t using you as a tool.
Stick with ZoneAlarm…I just read one of the companies who were getting zapped with the denial of service things investigated and he tried Black Ice and the the crackers went right through it like it wasn’t even there but Zone stopped them cold.
I’ve been using McAffee firewall, mostly because it was free on a magazing cover disc, but I also have XP firewalling switched on; McAffee has never reported any outside intrusion attempts (it occasionally asks me if it is OK for this or that application to communicate - things like Windows Update and the signature update utility for my virus guard etc).
Has anyone else used McAffee? Am I simply not seeing intrusions because they are being blocked, or could it be that my setup not working?
stig - you probably saw my other GQ thread, but if not, yes - from my 48 hours of experience you definitely need a firewall.
I find Zone Alarm easy, unintrusive, and extremely helpful. It doesn’t seem to hog the system or slow things down, anything like that. It’s nothing like the bad experiences I’ve had the past where (badly installed?) virus protection software takes over your whole system, and won’t even let you open Minesweeper without throwing a tantrum.