Posted on 01/22/2006 11:09:42 AM PST by B4Ranch
Is your firewall spying on you?
Zone Alarm gets rumbled
By Paul Hales, in Jerusalem: Sunday 22 January 2006, 12:39
IT’S OBVIOUS, REALLY, that the best way of penetrating users' PCs to see what they get up to online would be to become a Firewall maker. Like, when I wanted a Firewall and was too tight to pay for one, I turned to Checkpoint’s little freebie Zone Alarm. It sits there between you and the Internet and lets you know when someone’s trying to sneak in through your backdoor or when a program you’re running tries to connect to the Web for no apparent reason. When you’re as techie as me – not very – you just have to trust it.
Of course, Checkpoint’s an Israeli company and as a foreign journalist working in Israel you know the hyperactive security services here would like to keep tabs on you. And you know that they do. It has been confirmed to me by a security sources here that mobile phone conversations I have had have been listened to – and in circumstances which I won’t reveal, the contents of a call I have been involved in have actually been relayed back to me.
It’s part of the game – like the airport interrogation, or the surreptitious copying of your notepad while you’re off having a body search. You know what goes on but you have a job to do and just get on with it – hoping that what you get up to in the legitimate pursuit of your business won’t upset anyone to the extent that they’ll come break your door down and cart you off somewhere.
Now, the handsomely-named Mr Cringely has revealed that a colleague of his at Infoworld noticed that Zone Alarm 6.0 was sneakily sending off data to four different servers. Cringely says that Zone Labs (acquired by Checkpoint in March of 2004) at first denied the activity for a couple of months before deciding the software had a "bug" even though, as he points out, "the instructions to contact the servers were set out in the program’s XML code."
The company says it will fix the "bug" soon. In the meantime you can work around it by adding: # Block access to ZoneLabs Server 127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com to your Windows host file.
The "bug" seems to be present in the retail version of Zone Alarm, so there’s no telling what the freebie gets up to. We called Checkpoint here in Israel to find out, but were referred to a US spokeszoner. Trouble is they’ll all be in bed there on this sunny Sunday morning. µ
Software firewalls suck. Nothing can beat hardware.
BTTT
Tech/security pings.
Any thoughts on this???
There is no place like 127.0.0.1
I don't know anything about this in particular but I've found most of the time anything "free" comes with strings attached. It could be your email address is sold 4 billion times, you might get a spy, etc. Problem is that you don't know what you'll be getting as the string.
All I know is that I've used ZA and Adaware in the past and had nothing but trouble with my PC. In May I had to reformat my hard drive. Since removing both and cleaning out the junk, everything is working fine.
Nope. I've had the freebie ZA since 2000. When I had dial-up, way back when, I could watch hit attempt alerts coming in all day through Zone Alarm. I like Zone Alarm. No problems with it and decent software protection.
ping
Well, I purposely don't upgrade everything as soon as the new upgrades come out just for this reason. I don't doubt this is true, and now that they've been outed, they'll "fix" it for the time-being. Of course, the author touted an easy fix. I can actually understand the freeware containing this "bug", but if one pays for the whole she-bang, then I think one should not have to worry about being watched. Having said that, don't do anything on a computer you don't want others to know. It's hard to hide.
I build all my firewalls out of 7400 Quad NANDs.
For later.
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
I don't want anyone to think I don't feel that this could cause anyone of us problems. I'm into amateur radio also and there are many out there listening including me. Get the best equipment that you can afford and feel comfortable with. Then pay attention to your computer and do all the checks regular. I've had problems with my internet connection that they were being to protective with PDF files on Adobe Reader and I couldn't download things. I found away around them and things work fine. Something could happen to my computer and I'll have to deal with it. Just my thoughts and good luck to you all. Good luck with avoiding the bad guys.
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