Spyware Warrior

Webcapri · Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 4:16 pm Post subject: Windows Firewall

My internet sercurity suite that came with Vista laptop expired, so i tried a couple of free suite but it made my laptop load slow and freeze, so since i have router with a firewall so i just went with windows firewall til i can find a decent free firewall for vista or save some money and buy a suite. So i comfortable using the win firewall and home, but my question is can i trust it at wi-fi hotspot. I read how one guy, in fact doesn't use no firewall at all when he home, just using the one with router but when he is on the road he will enable a firewall program, to me it just doesnt sound right. Thank with any help.

mikey · Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:48 am Post subject:

I'm sorry, but I don't have time to discuss this at length.

Most common firewalls are inadequate for securing against sniffers on a 802.1 1 connection.

If you really want to protect a wireless connection, you will need to learn about SSH or SCP(encrypted VPN tunnel).

If you do work for a company remotely whether wired or not, then I'm sure they already have you on a VPN. If not, then they just don't care about data loss.

Bitvise has some very good docs; http://www.bitvise.com/ I know of them because I use their Tunnelier.

Another tool you might consider playing with is Rogue Scanner; http://www.paglo.com/opensource It will list all the nodes on your connection. Also their Packetyzer sniffer also has some 802.1 1 features. It's an Ethreal/Wireshark frontend using the home grown protocol stack WinPCap.

I'm sorry that I can't spend a lot of time on this subject. The subject of wireless use is an extensive one. The best policy for wireless is NO wireless. Since that isn't really practical, my suggestion is to encrypt your transfer.

I know this didn't answer your question but I hope it will give you something to think about.
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Tarq57 · Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:23 pm Post subject:

Wireless protection issue aside (partly because I don't know that much about it, but take Mikey's comments seriously), it is fairly likely that the suite that came with your laptop has not been removed correctly, which would be highly likely to cause freezing and errors with almost any other AV you later installed.
What was the AV that came with the computer, and what have you tried since?
There are plenty of very good applications to protect you, some are suites, some are standalone, some free, some you pay for.
What do you want in this regard, and how involved do you want to be in it? (eg: do you want a "suite" to just take care of everything without prompting, or are you OK with running manual scans and responding to results etc.)

Webcapri · Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:14 am Post subject:

Mikey thanks for the advice i will check out those link and do my research.

Tarq57, i had Trend Mirco work fine but wanted $80.00 just for another yr. I exit the program before i un-install it using revo. The following programs i used was Comodo suite and then online armor, slow and a lot program not responding with online armor, and slow not responding and freezing with comodo suite.

Tarq57 · Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 10:25 am Post subject:

[/b]Webcapri
What do you want in an AV/suite etc?
Any of the decent ones will allow a trial period where you can try it for free before purchase. Never thought I'd say this, but the latest (2009) offerings from Norton seem to be getting mainly good user reviews. (Norton has a bit of a reputation for being bloated and taking over.) A few other fairly popular names include Kaspersky, Eset, Avast, Avira... there are dozens. Whatever you decide to install do a bit of research of user reviews firs, and try the trial version before paying. What works well on some individual systems may not on some others, and vice versa.
Did you use Revo to remove the other applications you've installed? Online Armour, by the way, is a firewall/HIPS, not an AV suite. (Good rep, too.)
What I suspect may have happened is that you may have deleted needed registry keys as part of the cleanup with Revo. This is possible, in fact, it's easy, if you don't expand the registry entries and only delete the bolded ones, once the key has been expanded.
Does the computer run normally without any security included? (Not to be tried when connected to the web, of course.)

Tarq57 · Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:24 am Post subject:

Whoops. Sorry about the excessive bolding. An updated text editor would be nice. Embarassed

Webcapri · Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:18 pm Post subject:

Tarq57:

yea i had online armour as my FW and AVG as my AV then it ran sulggish but not as bad as comodo suite but kept AVG.

Always heard good news about Kaspersky, so i will try their suite.

yea i only check the bold with revo no trace of any of the old programs.

Osage · Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:50 am Post subject:

Not to disagree with mikey in any way, opening up your computer to wireless networking is a huge security hole. And without taking other measures, like mikey advocated, no security suite or mix and match security combo is going to do much to patch those holes.

Nor will I disagree with tarq57, who does a good job and covers the suite v. mix and match security options.

But if the original complaint of the OP is a slowdown in computer speed as a result of various security apps, its seems time to directly address those speed lowering questions.

1. We know that the OP has a laptop running Vista and little else. Its possible our OP sucked into buying a laptop loaded with bells and whistles, but with barely adequate ram, and and maybe flashy screen graphics, but what we don't know, if, as a money saving measure, the manufacturer short sheeted the OP on the the CPU and ram. Because with modern dual core processors and adequate ram, any descent modern computer should be able to
pull a heavy load of security apps with no noticeable slow downs.
But Vista can use every bit of ram it can get, XP may run well with 500 MB of ram, but Vista needs far more. And if our OP's laptop is having to use the swap files as virtual ram, that could be the slow down right there. First thing to check is how much free ram Vista reports.

2. I could not hep but note the OP was running AVG as an antivirus. And be it the free or paid version of AVG, from everything I have read, AVG is bloatware. And since an active AV is always active, having a bloated AV can be fatal to speed.

3. Actually the Vista firewall, being two way, is much better than the XP Sp2 firewall. But if you are a believer in multilayered defense, almost any firewall can't be judged by a quick try. Because it takes the firewall weeks or months to get properly configured to your habits, and as the firewall learns, its going to be bugging you almost all the time. Worse yet, something like Comodo3 or online armor somewhat blur the distinction between a
firewall and other security applications by adding HIPS and process control to the functions of a firewall, so training them can take longer.

4. I certainly will not bad mouth the Kaspersky security suite, but I am not a fan of security suites period. I have run a mix and match set of freeware security apps for many years now, more focused on HIPS, HOSTS, and process control Prevention, and despite the fact I have a low end dual core processor and only 1 GB of ram, I notice no slowdowns. I also keep seldom used applications off my start up list, so I have more free ram and boot up faster.

5. Depending on what version of Vista you have, you may be able to set up a limited account with a full software restriction policy. And then you are almost bulletproof if you do most of your web surfing using that account.

roger_m · Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:32 pm Post subject:

Osage you have made some excellent suggestions there. However I must add that by default the Vista firewall does not act as a two way firewall. You need to specifically create rules to block outgoing communication, otherwise it only prompts about allowing or blocking inbound communications. So for most users a 3rd party firewall is a must.

Osage · Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:09 pm Post subject:

Thank you Roger m for correcting my error about the Vista firewall. As you tell me its not quite as two way as some have said.

Webcapri · Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:40 pm Post subject:

Osage thanks with your thoughts, your right we did get this laptop with all the loaded crap, i uninstall some useless programs but others i haven't, not knowing if i should or if i can ie (IE browser, windows media Player) so i will go back after researching unistall some my programs.

Now i'm not sure what and how to see how much free ram is being reported, my laptop has 3.00 gb and right now with a messager, music player, playing as i type this, program, while looking at the task manager-performance tab: memory 1.37gb.

Just dump AVG and pick up Avira and re-install Online Armor, so far not bad a couple of times my laptop just went off and had to restart but all-in-all everything seems fine, and for years now we have beening surfing under limited accounts.