Gearing Up for College: No Cost or Low Cost Security
Saturday August 25, 2007
Whether you're going off to college for the first time, or are a returning student, chances are you're on a tight budget. Fortunately, that doesn't mean your computer security has to suffer. While these suggestions won't free you up from having to write term papers, they will free you up from suffering undue angst due to malware. And speaking of free, most of the solutions recommended are either low cost or totally no cost. >> Full article
Excellent information for the budget strapped folk out there.
Re: Install a firewall
-I’ve found an ominous problem with Vista. When using the free edition of Zone Alarm, it shuts down Vista’s Firewall and, that in turn, activates ‘File Sharing’ with no option to shut it off. Networking has always been risky, but I’m just a home user with no need for additional security risks.
I could turn off ‘File Sharing’ via Zone Alarm’s switches, but I tested my computer ports with an alarming awareness… Port 139 was open and available for shady business. I could manually close the port by modifying a certain Window’s ‘Service’, but the port would not be stealthed/hidden from ominous probes. The free edition of Zone Alarm couldn’t help me achieve full port stealth.
Alas, the only fix I could do was abandon Zone Alarm and activate Vista’s Firewall to turn off ‘File Sharing’. Finally, Port 139 was shut and is in stealth mode along with the rest of the ports.
A fine port checker, Gibson’s Shields UP!!:
http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2
In conclusion, I’m very dismayed about this issue in Vista. It seems like an obtrusive method to stay with the Vista Firewall, but I don’t get the reasoning behind it. I can only hope there is a work-around for average home users that depend on extra security, after all… it is our right. Microsoft boasts of “security”, but want went wrong with the Vista Firewall?? If I was to know this prior, I would have stayed with XP and had the free will and safe option to choose any Firewall that I desired.
ZoneAlarm is enabling file sharing and Vista uses port 139 for file sharing. The issue here isn’t with Microsoft, but rather with Check Point (owners/developers of ZoneAlarm).
“…it shuts down Vista’s Firewall and, that in turn, activates ‘File Sharing’ with no option to shut it off.” This is done at the OS level, where as any other firewall is second party… there lies the confliction, so ZoneAlarm cannot stealth or close the said port that is activated by Vista when it’s own firewall is turned off.
Apparently, this is an issue concerning Kaspersky Lab as well: http://forum.kaspersky.com/lofiversion/index.php/t31570.html
Mind you, I haven’t personally tried the Kaspersky Firewall to conclude more evidence about this issue. All in all, it’s probably safe to state that the premise is the same.
New development… I just downloaded and installed the new and free AOL’s partnership program with McAfee ‘McAfee Security Center’, complete with spyware guard and firewall.
I set the McAfee firewall to ‘Stealth’ and it passed with flying colors via Gibson’s port checker.
Now, there’s pretty much no way to tell if Port 139 is closed at present, but it is in stealth mode. That’s better than the free edition of ZoneAlarm’s capabilities.
I personally feel more protected than forced into using Vista’s own firewall. Everyone now has a perfect option and I can’t say how pleased I am.
It is near impossible to prevent malware from getting into your computer, even if you have a good firewall, and you scan for viruses every day, I got hit last week, and I am paronoid over running scans twice a day.
Low-Cost-Security.com