Quik-Fix versus others

Does anyone know of alternatives (pref. free) to PivX Quik-Fix? I've used BugOff by Merijn, but I'm not sure how it stacks up.

I want exploit hardening, but I really don't want to pay a lot of money for something that seems like registry hacks. On the other hand, I don't want to spend much time manually applying those tweaks either.

Any thoughts?

 

Hi spiff,

There are a number of alternatives to look at, here's just a few more well known ones.


Samurai

Samurai repairs all of the major flaws known to exist in Microsoft Windows operating systems. Unlike signature-based protection, Samurai repairs the problem, so that all attacks capitalizing on a specific vulnerability are stopped, not just attacks with known signatures.

Samurai provides the most extensive host based security available today without adding to the complexity of your existing security solution. There are no complicated installation procedures, no complicated user interfaces, no complicated enterprise deployment procedures, no complicated licensing requirements and no complicated update procedures. Just download and run; select all of the solutions from the solution list; and hit Apply Configuration. That’s all there is to it! Security professionals may elect to customize security settings and save specific configurations for enterprise deployment, but Samurai does not require security expertise.

Free

http://www.geocities.com/turbotramp2/samurai.html


What is Secure-It ?

Secure-It is a local Windows security hardening tool developed by Thierry Zoller, it proactively secures your PC by either disabling the intrusion and propagation vectors proactively or reduce the attack surface by disabling underlying functionality malware uses to execure itself.

It secures Windows desktop PCs against new dangers by blocking the root cause of the vulnerabilities exploited by malware, worms and spy ware . In some cases Secure-it is even able to protect your PC against threats prior to a patch release of the vendor.

How much does it cost ?
Nothing, it is free.

http://www.sniff-em.com/secureit.shtml


Safe XP

for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
Safe XP improves your system performance and makes Windows to run faster, more secure and more stable!
It is suitable for beginners and experts!

Buy SafeXP No. It's free.

http://www.theorica.tk/


Hope you find something of use to you in there.


StevieO

 

Pivx has now also replaced Qwik-Fix with PreEmpt. The two main differences here are that PreEmpt creates a virtual registry for the components that it protects, allowing it greater enforcment than is possible just using reg hacks, and it also now alerts you when something tries to exploit certain vulnerabilities. It should be noted, however, that PreEmpt does more than just registry stuff, it also patches some system files to patch things like the GDI+ vulnerability.

I also mentioned in another thread about Qwik-Fix that PreEmpt now also handles more applications than just Windows and AIM. They haven't made this public and they don't give options for it in the UI, but it's there. Since they're keeping a lid on it, I won't go into any details here, but if you're clever you can find out for yourself

I don't consider it a full replacment for the free apps, although it does cover many of the same things, Samurai and SafeXP both have capabilities beyond PreEmpt (SecureIt doesn't cover anything new really, however, except for putting in DropMyRights). Computer Security Tool is another good one that fills in what PivX misses. I should be updating my page soon (see the first link in my sig) to reflect all this, hopefully I can get around to giving more detail on using commercial and free tools both sooner, rather than later.