26 August 2006
Personal Firewalls not so safe.
A professor at the Polytechnic University of Lippe and Hoexter in Germany has tested six software-based firewalls for home users with none of them actually being able to stop all tested attempts to establish a connection. Both commercial and free firewalls were tested. More information can be found here.
The safer method is still to have a dedicated system only working as a firewall. A personal computer running both a user's applications and trying to function as a firewall can be a bit too much even for modern processors.
The best advice for a standard users is too keep their computer as up to date as possible including their anti-virus, browser and software. Surfing habits are of course important as well. People need to be careful. Downloading files with trojans or rootkits in them is the easiest way for a system to be compromised. Personal firewalls can do little to protect a system when a user does such actions. Of course this also goes for files received in your email. Also most importantly, DO NOT log in as an administrator account. It may seem easy for when you have to install something or maybe your computer for some reason will not run a certain application without being logged on as administrator. Work with the permissions of that file until you get it working, but do not log on as an admin. because it's easier, it is also easier for viruses to gain complete control of your system. Javascript is something that should also be disabled, even if it is less convenient for users who would have to enable it only for trusted pages that require it.
The safer method is still to have a dedicated system only working as a firewall. A personal computer running both a user's applications and trying to function as a firewall can be a bit too much even for modern processors.
The best advice for a standard users is too keep their computer as up to date as possible including their anti-virus, browser and software. Surfing habits are of course important as well. People need to be careful. Downloading files with trojans or rootkits in them is the easiest way for a system to be compromised. Personal firewalls can do little to protect a system when a user does such actions. Of course this also goes for files received in your email. Also most importantly, DO NOT log in as an administrator account. It may seem easy for when you have to install something or maybe your computer for some reason will not run a certain application without being logged on as administrator. Work with the permissions of that file until you get it working, but do not log on as an admin. because it's easier, it is also easier for viruses to gain complete control of your system. Javascript is something that should also be disabled, even if it is less convenient for users who would have to enable it only for trusted pages that require it.
