(no subject)
Jun. 1st, 2001 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottobearBlackICE defender is totally worthless.
ZoneAlarm, however, rocks the house as a firewall. bye-bye nasty bots.
I downloaded the current, completely free, version of ZoneAlarm 2.6 from the ZoneLabs web site and installed it on the "Sitting Duck" laptop. Upon restarting the machine I was gratified to receive immediate notification that the Zombie/Bot was attempting to make an outbound connection to its IRC chat server.
Meanwhile, the Sub7 Trojan was sitting quietly waiting for someone to connect to it. So I used another machine to "Telnet" to the port the Sub7Server Trojan was listening on. Up popped ZoneAlarm asking whether the nonsense-looking random character name the Sub7Server had chosen for itself should be allowed to accept a connection from the Internet.
Perfect performance from ZoneAlarm.
speaking of which,...
As you will see on the page below, if you use the RealNetworks RealDownload, Netscape/AOL Smart Download, or NetZip Download Demon utilities in their default configuration . . .
EVERY TIME you use one of these utilities to download ANY FILE from ANYWHERE on the Internet, the complete "URL address" of the file, along with a UNIQUE ID TAG that has been assigned to YOUR machine, and — in the case of Netscape's SmartDownload only — YOUR computer's individual Internet IP address, is immediately transmitted to the program's publisher.
This allows a database of your entire, personal, file download history to be assembled and uniquely associated with your individual computer . . . for whatever purpose the program's publishers may have today, or tomorrow.
VERY IMPORTANT: When I re-examined my findings in the face of RealNetworks' insistence that I was absolutely wrong about my conclusions, I caught something that I had missed before: My exact personal name and private eMail address was being sent back to RealNetworks whenever I downloaded a file. When I confronted RealNetworks with this, they explained that it was due to the fact that I had purchased a product from them in the past, and the "cookie" my system had received during the purchase was being returned to them.
That certainly makes file downloads seem far less "anonymous" than RealNetworks continues to allege.
see more info here - http://grc.com/downloaders.htm
ZoneAlarm, however, rocks the house as a firewall. bye-bye nasty bots.
I downloaded the current, completely free, version of ZoneAlarm 2.6 from the ZoneLabs web site and installed it on the "Sitting Duck" laptop. Upon restarting the machine I was gratified to receive immediate notification that the Zombie/Bot was attempting to make an outbound connection to its IRC chat server.
Meanwhile, the Sub7 Trojan was sitting quietly waiting for someone to connect to it. So I used another machine to "Telnet" to the port the Sub7Server Trojan was listening on. Up popped ZoneAlarm asking whether the nonsense-looking random character name the Sub7Server had chosen for itself should be allowed to accept a connection from the Internet.
Perfect performance from ZoneAlarm.
speaking of which,...
As you will see on the page below, if you use the RealNetworks RealDownload, Netscape/AOL Smart Download, or NetZip Download Demon utilities in their default configuration . . .
EVERY TIME you use one of these utilities to download ANY FILE from ANYWHERE on the Internet, the complete "URL address" of the file, along with a UNIQUE ID TAG that has been assigned to YOUR machine, and — in the case of Netscape's SmartDownload only — YOUR computer's individual Internet IP address, is immediately transmitted to the program's publisher.
This allows a database of your entire, personal, file download history to be assembled and uniquely associated with your individual computer . . . for whatever purpose the program's publishers may have today, or tomorrow.
VERY IMPORTANT: When I re-examined my findings in the face of RealNetworks' insistence that I was absolutely wrong about my conclusions, I caught something that I had missed before: My exact personal name and private eMail address was being sent back to RealNetworks whenever I downloaded a file. When I confronted RealNetworks with this, they explained that it was due to the fact that I had purchased a product from them in the past, and the "cookie" my system had received during the purchase was being returned to them.
That certainly makes file downloads seem far less "anonymous" than RealNetworks continues to allege.
see more info here - http://grc.com/downloaders.htm
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no subject
Date: 2001-06-01 09:04 pm (UTC)Damn ... now what I'm going to do with my evening. ;)
Re:
Date: 2001-06-01 09:05 pm (UTC)My pleasure! :) *hands you a happy cookie*
no subject
Date: 2001-06-01 09:25 pm (UTC)And yeah.. iread that about Netscape too. Scarey.
true that
Date: 2001-06-01 10:10 pm (UTC)Re: true that
Date: 2001-06-01 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-06-01 10:56 pm (UTC)And jftr, gozilla's privacy policy might be worth a read for those still using it.
I trust no-one. The truth is out there! ; p
(So is porn, spam, bad jokes and a lot of other schtuff... but somewhere, somewhere lies the truth!) ; )
no subject
Date: 2001-06-02 04:49 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2001-06-02 07:49 am (UTC)sneaky guys, they are!
Re:
Date: 2001-06-02 10:08 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2001-06-02 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-06-04 08:02 am (UTC)Zonealarm isn't for everyone (it's not exactly stable with > 1 CPU for example) but is a good, easy to use and, above all FREE solution. So is Tiny Personal Firewall (http://www.tinysoftware.com) (also funny under certain configurations). I wouldn't recommend Sygate Personal Firewall though as although it's good at first, it totally messed up my machine to the point that it couldn't connect to the internet at all (removed software, works fine now), although that does mean nobody can intrude so maybe it's a feature ;)