Arovax Shield - what should I monitor and NOT monitor (no use)?

Saw that Kees had this as proactive defense, and it seems to be effective, but it sure is chatty too... What would you users suggest to disable in terms of monitoring to just kick the chattiness down a notch? I mean, I still got other proactive solutions like Norton 2011 beta (SONAR 3, already detected new threats for me during testing against new malware links and stuff) and GeSWall, then after some days MD will come into the game as well. What do you think? What doesn't need to be monitored really?


Thanks

 

raven, you have a pretty tight setup now.

 

Raven,

I Agree with Trjam, there are much better options. I was just playing with it. Might be as an option for my only OS defense add-on (because I tweak a lot of settings in the policy throug XP Pro's gpedit.msc) on my playing PC.

Sorry

 

No need to say sorry, I just like everyone else here like to play with setups, see what tightens for my needs most.

BTW, I'm not running the same setup now, will update my sig. later when I'm done. It's kinda like yours but with one major difference - GW instead of DW. DW is more tight if you ask me, as well as automatic.


If I ask like this then... with the setup of GW, avast! (File and Behavior with the shields on default settings) and later on MD to protect me, I'll see if MD will be too chatty, but with or without MD, what should be monitored by Arovax, more than anything considering GW as my primary defense?

 

The last update of Arovax Shield was in 2007?

 

MD is really chatty

 

Raven,

I just to have GW on my Son's PC and DW on my Wife;s PC. Brian of GW gave me a life long lisence (Ilya a 100 year iisence some years ago ).

GW was a lot faster than earlier DW versions, because it uses parts of the OS protection mechanism. In their startup phase GW was really responsive and with GW, I got all the game related downloaders and messenger things working (team speak etc). Then Ilya developed resource protection to seperate untrusted from untrusted, with this mechanism and the logs (and Ilya), you can get anything working correctly with DW. Also Ilya did some asthonishing code optimisation.


Some considerations in favour of GW
GW has some sort of virtualisation option (redirect) which offers Sandboxie like application virtualisation. With an application like Chromium, you can allow read access to its programs firectory, and allow access to its download director (you specified in preferences) and the following file out of the user data (C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME e.g. Raven]\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium\User Data\Default\bookmarks

Note be sure to install all the plug-ins and extentions you want and set you rpreferences with Chromium running trusted.

Set all other disk access to redirect, same with registry access.
With this you have a sandboxie like shell around the Chromium policy sandbox.


Some considerations in favour of DW
DW has total untrusted file control. It is something which is completely automated without user intervention. When you save a file out of a ZIP file with GW with (I forgot which, I belive it is unzip here ..) 7-zip, it turns untrusted into trusted. Same happens when you move a file from one partition to another the untrusted data marker gets lost (limitation of NTFS), so untrusted becomes trusted.

DW's FW is much more user friendly. (I would only limit untrusted files to go outbound, it also has a known protection breach, mentioned in GW forum).

Running GW and MD together
I would use MD free behind GW, with the following settings
- tune down file protection from any location to C root and Windows and Program files
- use registry protection to the full
- use MD's FW instead of GW (only limit untrusted to go outbound with GW)
- trim down application/process protection to
a) ask on all direct (disk/keyboard/registry ) access
b) driver install
c) access kernel objects
d) deny special rights like debug mode etc
e) ignore the rest

Reason: you got max protection on the threat gates, trim down sustem wide protection to a level on which you allways keep control of you system. With the above settings you enforce a LUA like environment system wide. Wiith these settings Avast will always be able to remove any virus slipping through (Avast safe boot scan + rootkit knowledge of GMER makes it the most resillient freewar AV available).

Above is a nice freeware setup

Alternatively
Enter control userpasswords2 in the run as, set your current user to LUA or use Surun. Add Avirax in this setup https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1668139&postcount=7990

And you have a low pop-up no brains second system wide safety net behind DW which is a no brainer. on an XP PC

 

avast! caused some weird slowdown on my system, so it'd to go. I'll use Hitman Pro for malware cleaning.

With the combo, could you PM me a guide how to do all these things? The reason is I can't navigate in MD at all except for the prompts and GW, well I don't even know a FW in there.


Thanks

 

Yeah thats right, all Arovax software was discontinued except for Smarthide a while ago.

 

I should note that I'd to throw out GW as it was causing slowdowns even if I'd manually added some games that it should not touch (it's bugging with all games, making them untrusted and lagging), so it's only MD from here, and it sure is enough for my taste. It works like my SRP apart from all the other monitoring. avast! is still not here as less software means less I/O, and especially when it comes to AV software.