Online Armour will continue to grow

For anyone interested , OA has alot of things on their to do list . The program is excellent as it is now . They just want to continue to build it with more features but , without bloat . If you have not thought about it , you might want to check it out . If you wanted to check out a product that will protect you from almost every type of malware , this is it . I am not a salesman nor do I wish to force it on anyone . I have used this since the first beta and can tell you that this product is incredible . And customer service is excellent as well . Just trying to help those that are looking for a strong solution against malware . I cannot see how you would ever regret just trying it . I did and was hooked .
Good luck and I hope that helps some who want to try something but , are unsure of which way to turn .
And I have nothing to do with their company . I just love the productas it does so much , so well ......Wo w .

 

Well i installed it a couple of days ago on my spanky new XP machine. I previously had problems running it on my WinME machine. It is running superbly now. And i must say i'm extremely impressed so far. Nice easy design, good GUI, not being a resource hog and so far it has already intercepted a few things like suspicious activeX and spyware cookies. I also like the way it stops dead a new application trying to install and gives you options to allow or not and also tracks changes made by application's installed.

One thing i'd like is in the history. I'd like to be able to right click one of the items and be able to copy the info there so i can paste it to a location of my choosing. Or a way to dump a log of the items in history. Maybe i missed it, but i can't find that option anywhere. So far so good. Looking like a keeper.

The only thing i'm considering at the moment is whether i should run my beloved Regrun Gold with it. Thinking about it at the moment. I wonder if anyone else out there is running them both together?

muf

 

i'm going to get this for my computer when i get one well my own computer not the family one

 

Mike`ll be able to answer that one for you soon as he sees the post. IMO I think it`ll work fine with OA.

 

I tried OA trial and I don't see how to add Firefox and IE to the programs list so you can have it intercept them everytime you, or something else (malware?) tries to start them. I want OA to warn me everytime I open my browsers. Some other programs can open also with no warning whatsoever from OA. Can anyone explain how I can add any program I want to the programs list? Thanks.

 

I use them both, they're great together

Right now they're both on the whitelist (so less knowledgable users aren't forced to decide whether the exe is safe or not), but there will be a lot more control in 1.2.

 

Yes it is a good program and I'm thinking of replacing ZAP with it as I have a hardware firewall.
One thing Hollywoodpc is that Scoundrel Simulator can still disable registry and internet options with OA running while that software you bagged in another thread (I read all the great things about Sandboxie . For me , it is useless . It is , INDEED , weak ) stops all changes when sandboxed.
Any such malaware picked up from the net running your browser through Sandboxie is contained so it ain't all that weak or useless.

 

A few people have asked for history-related things. I'll add this one on to todo list.

Mike

 

Hi Franklin,

OA currently has a limited number of reg keys it protects against. In version 2 of OA (formerly referred to as 1.2), we will have much fuller registry protection.

The core engine is basically done already; The only thing we really need to do is expand the list of keys that are protected, and provide users with the ability to add/remove keys they want monitored.

OA 2.0 will be a free upgrade for all current OA users.


Hope that helps


Mike

 

PS. For anyone trying to install OA unsuccessfully, we had a database outage this morning. It's been restarted, so all should now be well.

Mike

 

Once again Mike, I can't wait til Online Armor 2.0 comes out!

dja2k

 

Hi dja2k,

Me too, but there is a way to go before then ) We've started to integrate some of the code we developed for a proof of concept kernel-mode keylogger/rootkit detector into an Experi-Mental issue of OA.

I am hopeful that I'll get something out to our beta team by the end of the week. This one's able to easily detect Elite Keylogger (and other programs of it's class), and also to detect the stealthed registry entries it (and I suppose other programs) can make. It's also able to detect programs that use the same method as Martins Undetectable Keylogger.

Just this change alone will be a significant boost in OA's anti-keylogger capabilities and I am fairly confident that it will make it a compelling choice for those looking for protection from Keyloggers.

So, the Kernel mode stuff is exciting me more than 2.0 at the moment )


Mike

 

Does running Online Armour provide enough protection to eliminate the need for other active scanners like Spyware or trojan programs. Programs like Ewido, A squared or Spysweeper...etc...

 

There are two answers to this, depending on your overall confidence and experience with computer systems.

Personally, I run behind a hardware firewall at both the office and at home (the home one is one of the ADSL/Combo units), the office one is a bit more substantial.

On my system I run OA, and just OA. It's enough for me personally to protect against sneakiness such as drive-by downloads or other exploits - nobody can get near my PC thru the firewall, and any error on my part allowing something to run would be picked up by OA.

Sometimes I will run an ad-aware scan just to check everything is working nicely, and that's about it.

However, for less experienced users (or people who frequent the types of site that I would go to before my wife found the "history" button in IE) then I would not suggest OA is a complete replacement at the moment.

OA will identify when an EXE runs, embedded content in pages, keyloggers, changes to hosts files, etc. It is a great proactive/preventative solution. That's what it does - and, if you make a bad call - it will let you roll it back.

An AV will provide another line of defense. It will also (assuming it is a known threat) positively identify it. AntiSpyware products can provide confirmation that the system is clean of known threats.

So, with OA you may get "zzzzz.exe" is an unknown program. An AV may say "zzzzz.exe" is 'trojan.gimme-all-your-money"


Hope that helps


Mike

 

Interesting, thanks for the reply Mike. I run Look N' Stop firewall, Process Guard and DrWEB. I have a license to Spysweeper but those spyware programs can get a bit heavy on RAM and memory usage. You have to watch them like a hawk too because of the occasional FP. This may be the perfect compliment to my set-up, think I'll give it a trial...cheers...

 

I asked the same question over on the Online Armor forum yesterday (which Mike also answered). I was planning to continue running the Spysweeper active shields but am now having second thoughts when reviewing each one.

- It seems the BHO, startup, hosts, ActiveX, IE (hijack, homepage, tracking cookie etc.) shields are covered by OA.

- Memory shield is handled by both OA and additionally I have Boclean

- Spy Installation & spy communication shields must rely on running processes (?) so are covered by the program control of OA - with a bit of intelligence as Mike says (the only remaining useful shield is the ADS execution which might or might no be covered here).

I will probably try running Spysweeper as an on-demand scanner only and stick to my core (active) security suite of Avast!, Boclean, firewalls (hw & Filseclab) and OA. I'm still undecided on keeping Spywareguard & Snoopfree but for the resources they use I'll probably keep them until somebody confirms otherwise. OA additionally removes the need for me to run Antihook.

I'm probably a little light on registry protection but this is promised in the next OA release.
Anybody else any thoughts?

 

I am thinking on the same line as you. I am going to keep Spysweeper as an on demand scanner and have A-squared running for watching the memory and stray trojans etc. Spysweeper tends to get a bit heavy to run with all those guards running plus I primarily use Firefox to keep out of the spyware danger zone. With my AV, ProcessGuard, router and common sense surfing I should be in good shape...one would think anyway eh?...cheers...

 

Online Armor does also contain a blacklist of known malware. They aren't strong signatures like you would get with something like Ewido, but you do still get a bit of both worlds with OA. Personally I run NOD32 and Ewido, then prefer generic protection (like OA) after that. Generic protection requires a bit more from the user, but if used properly it can provide much stronger protection.. and OA does make good strides in bringing this down to the common user (if my gf and mom can use it effectively, anyone here can).