Has anyone had experiance with this one ? http://www.8signs.com/index.cfm How would it compare with LookNStop ?
Great light firewall. Excellent inbound protection combined with tarpits. It will offer you better and more granular control of inbound, but it does not have any application control. Cheers, Alphalutra1
Sublime. Extremely lightweight (2.940K), yet impressive functionality. Deerfield is selling it under its own VisNetic brand; their tech support recently told me that there is a new version in the works. http://www.deerfield.com/products/visnetic-firewall/
I ran Visnetic for over a year and loved it. It's a good, light, solid firewall and does what it does very well. My only wish is that they had outbound protection. If they could incorporate outbound control that equals their inbound protection, I think Visnetic/8Signs could be the best of the bunch. Still, it's great firewall.
8Signs/VisNetic is a rule-based firewall. Of course it filters outbound traffic; any ruleset you create will be applied to inbound as well as outbound traffic. I have no idea what the next version will be like - nothing listed under http://www.8signs.com/firewall/beta.cfm yet - but it seems likely that Vista support will be on the agenda.
Update: 8Signs Firewall 3.01 beta released! Improvements: # DNS Names - rules can now be based on DNS names in place of IP addresses. For example, you can now create a rule allowing RDP access _only_ from a particular host machine (i.e. your laptop running a dyndns client) # Added a Port Scan exceptions list. You can now designate IP addresses that are exempt from the Port Scan setting "Ban the IP address of the scanner". This is useful for people who want to ban (unknown) port scanners, but need to allow a monitoring application to scan their system. # Added a registry value for ICMP stateful inspection timeout. # Added the ability to modify IP Groups from the command line. Following is the command set that is available: dfw.exe -ipgroup update -name {name of group} -file {filename} dfw.exe -ipgroup add {address, address1-address2, address/mask} -name {name of group} dfw.exe -ipgroup delete {address, address1-address2, address/mask} -name {name of group} These commands will allow you to add/delete/modify IP Address Groups. For example, let's say you have a rule that is allowing access to your SQL Server on port 1433. The Remote Addresses that this rule will apply to are in an IP Group that you've created called SQLAllow. If you want to add IP address 209.103.14.89 to this group (meaning that this IP could then connect to the SQL Server), the command line would be: dfw.exe -ipgroup add 209.103.14.89 -name SQLAllow Command functions: update - will replace the entries in the group with those in the filename you have specified add - will add IP's to the group (can use single addresses, ranges, or address/mask combintations) delete - will remove IP's from the group # Added an external log viewer application that allows you to create filtered views of your firewall log entries. This application requires Microsoft's .Net 2.0. Bug Fixes: # Fix to Ports display not working on all 2003 Servers # Fix to Remote Admin Tool not displaying IP Groups correctly after making a change to the group. # Fix to Remote Admin Tool not displaying log entries. # Fix to default values for NTP client and server rules. http://www.8signs.com/firewall/beta.cfm
Travellinman Phant0m's comparsion of the 8-Signs and LNS firewalls are detailed on his site: http://www.mntolympus.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2032 prk
Thanks for the link Prk.uk. The only thing stoping me from tring 8 signs is no application filtering.(kindda like that feature)Wonder if they plan on adding that sometime in the future.
travellinman Application control for 8-Signs can be provided by your Look-n-Stop (with just the application filtering enabled), previous versions of ZoneAlarm say 2.6.362 or 4.5.594 (with both security settings at low), Kerio 2.1.5 and other Firewalls. The memory usage for 8-Signs on a Win2k system is approx 4400k to 4600k and if used with ZoneAlarm 2.6 will give an approx total memory requirement for the "total firewall" of 9800k. Other methods of application control may be provided by security programmes such as System Safety Monitor. Members of this forum may be able to advise on this. prk
Two firewalls on one PC,I don't think so. Even with some features turned off most say not good. I may try SSM thou. Must be better then PG free.
travellinman It is generally thought that having two software firewalls running is likely to cause conflicts that reduce your protection; especially where rules are hardcoded and cannot be overcome by any user configurations. I would not run two firewalls together without sufficient reason to believe the two were really compatible on my machine. So the question is, are 8-Signs for I/C and O/G traffic and Look n Stop/Kerio 2.1.5/ZoneAlarm 2.6.262 etc configured for application control, compatible?. IMHO the stated firewalls are for my machine. Interesting question though. prk Dell 4100 with Win2k operating system.
Only the paid version of SSM currently gives Network access control. Prosecurity free does have network access control.
Is this 8signs FW really good? I am searching for a lightweight, not complicated and free FW other than Comodo? I tried Outpost but it seems to hang XP when it updates. Comodo is really good but what free FW is next to it. According to matousec, Comodo is the best firewall out there followed by Jetico 2. But Jetico is complicated and not for newbies. Any comments or suggestions? thanatos
If you understand how to create firewall rules, what tcp & udp & icmp & other protocols are, know what ports to allow and disallow, feel comfortable opening ports for applications, understand basic principle of SPI, then it isn't very difficult and quite easy to use. For someone with little knowledge in the area, it will most likely not help your security, but rather be detrimental since you will probably configure something wrong and open up a hole. Cheers, Alphalutra1
Sorry but I am not familiar with creating firewall rules. Can you teach me then? And I am not asking for a lecture... I am asking for a probable list of free firewalls out there other than Comodo. Firewalls that can suit newbies like me.
thanatos_theos Unfortunatley 8-Signs is not freeware. The simplest way to create a new ruleset with this firewall is to let 8Signs Firewall do it for you. Their help file will explain most things. May I suggest a sample ruleset is given here : https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=967578&postcount=4 prk
8Signs works just fine with the application control of LnS as long as LnS network abilities are turned off. Why not go with Comodo, or even 8Signs along with Comodo's application control (disable network monitor)
