ZoneAlarm Pro 3.7.098 Updating

Bug!

In the new ZA+, I have experienced the same bug that some others have posted about. If the ZA User Interface is set to open to the Log Viewer panel when you click the ZA icon in the systray, sometimes it opens and does not completely paint the window. The outline and primary structure of the UI is there, but, the scrollable portion with the log entries in it is not painted. Whatever was below that window on the desktop (another window or the desktop itself) is still visible.

It only seems to happen if the ZA UI has been minimized for a while and other programs are more active. I think it's a bug in how ZA is calling the Windows routines for painting windows. You can get the log viewer window to fully display by hitting another UI tab and coming back to it - which is a fairly standard work-around that I've seen with other window painting problems in other apps in the past. Perhaps this has to do with how they changed the handling of the updating of information in the log viewer as I noted in my post above.

So far, this is the only bug I've seen.

The new ZA+ is definitely seeing more Programs and Components than the previous version. Programs with even a hint of access to "network aware" routines are being seen and listed in the ZA+ program / component tabs. This does not seem to cause any problems though.

The oddest program to see in that list is the "IP Configuration Utility" (ipconfig.exe), which is what you use on Windows XP in a CMD window to list your network info (similar to winipcfg.exe on Win9x systems). ZA+ sees it, an alert will pop-up if I run an "ipconfig /all" cmd, but, the program never actually accesses the external network. (No packets go out.) I suspect that ipconfig.exe must link to other network aware components which ZA is monitoring.

 

Interesting thing with the Advanced Program Control...

By default, the global setting is enabled, (see top half of image below), so that ZA+/ZAP will warn you about programs using other programs to access the Internet. This works very well. A program like tooleaky will cause ZA+/ZAP to generate a pop-up asking if you want it to be able to use IE to access the Internet.

Now, most programs are not given the ability to bypass this warning, (see the OE example in the bottom half of the image). However, ZA+/ZAP does automatically give several programs this ability (by automatically setting the "This program may use other programs to access the Internet" check box).

On my system, following a clean install of ZA+ 3.7.098 (including a full wipe of previous version, including deleting the true vector databases, installing and re-entering all custom settings) , and without using the automatic program configuration wizard, ZA decided to give this bypass capability to the following programs:

1. Zone Alarm Plus itself (zaplus.exe)
2. Windows NT Logon Application (...\system32\winlogon.exe)
3. Windows Explorer (c:\winnt\explorer.exe)
4. Windows Command Processor (...\system32\cmd.exe)
5. Services and Controller app (...\system32\services.exe)
6. Microsoft Word (...\office10\winword.exe)

I'm not sure I agree with these being given those rights. Of course, you can go in manually and reset these so that they can't use other programs, or, you can grant a specific program this bypass capability, so that you don't have to disable the entire Advanced Program Control capability, if you are experiencing problems.

It takes some testing to determine just what you need to allow. For myself, I prefer starting with tighter security and granting only what's needed to make my system work as I have it configured.