excerpted from fred langa's langalist, dated 1/7/01....
"ZoneAlarm's "Flaws"
Many readers have been, er, alarmed at recent breathless reports of
security holes in ZoneAlarm and other personal firewalls. The flaws in
some of the firewalls are serious: For example, several firewalls are
designed so that once they're configured to allow a certain
application to access the Internet, they'll always allow *any* like-
named app to access the Internet. This is a problem because a Worm or
Trojan could rename a malicious file to something "safe" like
"Explorer.Exe" and thus fool the firewall. (More info:
zdnet.com )
ZoneAlarm avoids this particular trap because it checks for more than
just the name of the apps it's configured to pass; a simple renaming
of a malicious file would not get past ZoneAlarm.
But ZA does have a minor issue with the way it handles uninstalls:
It's possible--- through a convoluted and (IMHO) unlikely scenario---
for a Worm or Trojan to force ZA to ununinstall itself. If that
activity somehow escaped your notice, you'd then (obviously) no longer
be protected by ZoneAlarm. And then, if your system had other,
exploitable security holes, you might be open to hack attack. (More
info: net-security.org )
Because it's unlikely, and requires other, additional security holes
before anything bad could happen, I believe this is not a significant
issue, and not worth worrying about. The issues with other firewalls,
however, are real and much more serious.
My bottom line recommendation is twofold: First, I believe ZoneAlarm
is still the best available personal firewall, and well-worth having.
Second, because *no* software is perfect or flaw-free, you shouldn't
rely on *any* one line of defense against hackers. Instead, if you
ensure that your system is set up securely in the first place, and if
you take reasonable care in your online activities, and if you use a
good firewall, then these multiple lines of defense will interlock and
make you virtually immune to hack attack.
If you want full details on how to build a FREE and nearly
impenetrable multi-layered defense for your system, check out the four-
part series at winmag.com . " |
