I need a firewall to protect 3 home comps on cable modem

[Bignate603]

Ok, i just lost all my hard drive to a virus, only could have gotten there through the cable modem so now i need protection. Norton has a desktop firewall program. Anybody have any idea how good it is and how much of a preformance hit i'll tike for running it? Any other suggestions on a hardware or software solution would be helpful. I was thinking of getting a 486 sticking two network cards in it and letting it act as a linux box... but that would take money...

 

[sd]

I'm using Zone Alarm Pro. You can get Zone Alarm for free. I used that for a while and seemed to work really good. One day they sent me a $10.00 off coupon, so I bought the Pro version. Has some nice features.

 

[Trippin]

i run zone alarm free also been really pleased with it but i run 56k dialup...as i understand with cable modem and static ip its good to have software firewall but to be 100% safe need hardware firewall...not sure just my .02 hope to have cable modem one day to find out

link-sys makes a one port router for around $99 and another with a 4pt switch too for $149...it think netgear and others also make cheap home versions..check reviews on some pages

 

[jmcoreymv]

Well if it was a virus and not a trojan, a standard firewall wont do anything because chances are it was in something you chose to DL and run.

 

[IsOs]

That's true, virus usually are downloaded by your own action, via visiting the site or opening email. You need a good anti-virus program. Firewall is good to block unauthorized internet communications. ZoneAlarm, Norton Internet Security and BlackICE are good software solution. If you already has an anti-virus, make sure that you regularly update the virus definition file and scan your system regularly. If the program can be set to automatically scan for virus even on email, do so. Goodluck.

 

[5dollahoe]

you probably lost all the files on your hard drive due to your own actions. all the people above are very accurate. a firewall wouldnt stop YOU from downloading a virus.

what a firewall will do is protect others from maliciously attacking your computer. some high end firewalls can filter files and scan them, but those are out of your price range. you are probably limited to a product like linksys cable dsl router. its good and fairly cheap but wont stop YOU from downloading viruses.

to protect yourself from viruses, keep your antivirus program up to date. scan regularly. thats it.

setting up a linux box as a firewall is fairly simple. a 486 might run ipchains (for IPmasquerading) fine, ive never tried on that lowend of hardware.

however, installing linux and running ipchains correctly isnt easy for the average windows user. if you are the average windows user (the ones who download viruses and infect themselves), then i suggest a simpler GUI experience. Zone Alarms Software Firewall is easy to setup but not as versatile as a linux ipchains solution. maybe the linksys cable router would be better. either of these would do. i dont recomend linux for the average windows user. but if you are properely motivated, you could learn linux (assuming you know nothing about it). you have to be very motivated to learn linux though. from a windows users perspective, linux is entirely alien. stick to solutions like ZoneAlarm or Linksys Cable Router. You will be less frustrated.

 

[Bignate603]

well, i didn't download anything between the time it was good and went kaput so i doubt it was a virus then. Somehow i got attacked without me doing anything. Trojan maybe, I had alot of things set for a lan party a while back so i think that opened me up a bit. I'm not stupid enough to download progs from unreliable sources... As for the linux box, i'm not the average user (I've used, tweaked and swore at several versions of windows). However, i've had no experience with another OS besides mac and i never really liked that...

 

[oreoafk]

zonealarm should be great

 

[HKSturboKID]

BlackIce is pretty good also. You get block ip and permit ip as they are being logged.

 

[yos]

I would highly recommend Zone Alarm Pro... it's only like 20 bucks... and it works great...

 

[Looney]

I'll reiterate (or repeat like an ape) what so many have said... a firewall will NOT protect you against a virus or trojan, because those must be downloaded and initiated at your end.

Now, are you sure that your hdd failure was due to a virus or trojan? Did you have a virus scanner in place (you should ALWAYS have one, even if you disable it most of the time, when you do download something, then enable it, and do regular scans).

Anyways, if you have a cable modem, then it's definitely necessary (just like a virus scanner) to have a firewall up... my recommendation is ZoneAlarm too. Blackice is also good, but can lead to paranoia because you'll see LOTS of pings at your computer and a lot of false alarms. It's also very unstable, and goes down with new Windows Update, and takes a few days for a new patch to be available... and if you're using ICS, then the ICS server can't be running Blackice. Norton firewall is crap... it's ugly, and can be confusing for the first time firewall user (you'll have to map all your ports and rules manually).

 

[Bignate603]

Yeah, i installed Zonealarm and it seems to be working good. Every now and then it seems something tries to echo, you think this is a legit program i got, or somebody doing a scan on me?

 

[5dollahoe]

i will repeat moralpanic since he accurately repeated the truth: a firewall will not protect you against viruses or trojans. They are installed from your end by the USER. generally accidentally.

if a trojan installs itself (i suggest downloading loads of warez to try this), the port it scans on (1337 for backorifice, right?) will open up. i believe zonealarm prompts you when a service is started on your computer. am i right (used zonealarm once and hated it)? this allows you to block that port. i suggest (if the program is capable) blocking every port but what you need, which is gernally zonealarms default.

generally a firewall (zonealarms in this case) will not protect you from installing an infected package. this should be done by a good anitvirus. get and install an antivirus if you dont have one.

 

[Spanker]

Moralpanic,
Just a quick question, whats the problem running Blackice on an ICS PC?
I had it running on my network until I picked up a Netgear router. Outside of the TONS of alarms I got, it appeared to work great for access by 4 other machines.
thanks,

 

[Bignate603]

if it wasn't a virus or a trojan, i don't know what it was. i didn't have a antivirus on there but i had only downloaded from places microsoft and a nvidia for the newest drivers. One day i booted up and windows was freaking screwed over. i tried overwriting the sys files that it found corrupted but every time it rebooted the files were again screwed over. i have no clue what it was, all i know was that my file sharing was still open from a lan party and i had NOTHING on this machine at the time to protect against viruses (I know that's stupid, i had just built the freakin system for a lan party and hadn't gotten around to doing much else besides drivers and games. Trust me, i beat myself over the head enough about that.) So otherwise, i'm in the dark about why it started self distructing windows sys files. I find it even more srcewy that they corrupted themselves after i copied them clean and overworte the old ones. The drive is a brand new seagate so it shouldn't be bad...

 

[Abednigo]

We had a virus attack and since have run panda software's virus program on full mode. We installed it on our file/internet server and it filters everything and it's brother. panda software. We've even found that if another user on the network tries to copy, move, open or change a file on the server the program will check and disinfect it on the fly.

 

[Looney]

Just a quick question, whats the problem running Blackice on an ICS PC?

The last time i used Blackice (about a year ago), you couldn't install Blackice on the ICS computer... all the other's in the network you could, but if you installed Blackice on the ICS computer, the others couldn't access the internet.

Similar problem with Zonealarm, but with ZA, you can turn the security to 'medium' and the other computers in the network can access the internet ok.

I'm not sure if Blackice solved that problem yet, but i still don't like Blackice... gives way too many false alarms purposely, so that you'll get paranoid enough to use their software only (because no other firewall software is as sensitive as Blackice, so users often think Blackice is better because it reports EVERYTHING).

 

[Spanker]

Oh, Blackice seems to have that fixed now but yes if anyone chooses to use it do the research to understand which "alarms" are really a threat. If not you'll freak when you check the history.
Anyone used McAfees personal firewall?

 

[858diver]

I'm struggling with McAfee right now for my Proxy server.

The documentation is insufficient, as is their web support, and the e-mail support is down!

STAY AWAY!