Zone Alarm 6 Generic Host settings question

Hello there

I've justed upgraded my ZA Security Suite to version 6.

By default it gives Generic Host Process Server rights in the Trusted Zone and from what I can gather from their forums it does need this right.

Rightly or wrongly ( undoubtedly probably wrongly), in the previous version I denied absolutely everything from having Server rights including Generic Host Process.

I didn't notice any compromise on my system as I recall - If I remember correctly I got prompts for internet access which I granted.


Questions are then, why does it need Server access and what problems should I experience by denying it this right ?

On a similar vein, whenver I load up Mozilla Thunderbird I'm prompted whether I want to allow it to act as a server. I always deny but ZA doesn't give the option to 'deny always'. What's the story there ?

I don't yet subscribe to the ZA forums and besides I've found the posters here very accommodating.

Any ZA users (or others )with feedback greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Jon

 

Mine didn`t ask for server rights and I have it X`ed off to deny access. Everything works fine just the way it is. That was in this 6 and the last 5.5 without server rights.

 

Hi there Beetlejuice

Can I ask which question you are referring to Generic Host or Thunderbird ?

 

Ooops sorry old monk. Neither one has asked for server rights. Thunderbird did need "Send Mail" option checked in ZA but that`s normal.

 

Generic hosts processes (svchost.exe) runs many of the various Windows services. Depending on which services are running they may or may not need to act as server in trusted zone (loopback 127.0.0.1), through which different parts of Windows communicate. They are not, in that zone acting as server for the internet.
You could set it to ask, to monitor whether/when on your setup any service does want to act as server (listening for a response from some other part of Windows on your PC). Setting to ask, you'd get an alert if/when it wanted to.

 

No problem Beetlejuice !

Thanks to both of you for the reply. I think I'll stick to the original game plan and deny all server rights until something doesn't work.

Cheers

 

My experience with ZA and server rights is that it's very rare that any program or service really needs it. I have denied it always, and never had any problems. One exception might be something like a p2p program, which would need to accept inbound connections.

I'd suggest setting them all to Ask and see what happens, or better yet, if and when a popup asks for server rights for a program, try denying it and then see if anything ceases to work properly. If all is well, then you're ok. If something does stop working then you can try to find out which program needs server access and perhaps then allow it.