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Firewall engines connections (2008/04/26 18:37)
During the update of our list of personal firewalls and HIPS for Windows we have gained some interesting information about the connections between several products. We have also identified a number of projects that were stopped.
The Firewall Challenge product list contains almost 90 product families but not all the products have their own engine. Let's have a look at the connections between the today's personal firewalls.
Starting from the most popular products, we should mention Comodo Firewall Pro. Its engine is used in products of The Shield family. We can find some information about this connection on Comodo's forum. The thread that comments The Shield products became very popular since some of Comodo users hardly stood the information about this connection.
Outpost Firewall Pro is another popular product, which engine was sold to be used in other firewalls. Since November 2005 Lavasoft Personal Firewall has been using the Outpost's engine. Agnitum published the information about this connection on its website. The connection between Outpost Firewall Pro and Lavasoft Personal Firewall is well known. Much less known is the connection between Outpost and two other security products – BullGuard Internet Security and Quick Heal products. BullGuard uses only one component of the Outpost's engine, hence it offers much weaker protection than Outpost Firewall Pro. The information about these two connections can be found in two Agnitum's news – "Agnitum licenses Outpost firewall technology to Bullguard and CAT" and "Agnitum extends global technology license for Outpost firewall and security suite".
Privatefirewall has also become a popular security product with solid firewall engine. Not many people know that it is the Privatefirewall's engine that runs in Webroot Desktop Firewall.
One of the most widespread engines among the personal firewall products is the one of Filseclab Personal Firewall. Although this engine is not being developed anymore, it is the base of Antechinus product line, Omniquad product line and also XMicro product line.
The engine of AVG Internet Security is the base of Steganos Internet Security. This connection has been published in the announcement on Steganos' website.
The last connection we have revealed so far is the connection between Securepoint Personal Firewall and Škoda Firewall, which used Securepoint's engine. However, Škoda Firewall is a dead project today and Securepoint Personal Firewall is not very popular too.
We have also found that the following products are not under development, not supported or do not exist anymore:
- 1-ACT Personal Firewall
- Adorons Firewall
- BitGuard Personal Firewall
- BlackICE PC Protection
- eTrust EZ Firewall
- Freedom Firewall
- GateSweeper
- Hurricanesoft Personal Firewall
- Neoava Guard
- Sphinx x-Wall
- Sygate Personal Firewall
- Škoda Firewall
- TheGreenBow Personal Firewall
- WyvernWorks Firewall
There are many other firewall projects that are dead or not updated anymore but their websites still exist and their status can not be easily determined.
Are you aware of any connections between personal firewalls that we do not know about? Have we missed any dead project? Then please contact us and share your information with us and our visitors.
Comodo Firewall Pro 3 (2007/11/21 20:14)
Comodo Group released a new stable version of their popular security product – Comodo Firewall Pro 3. According to Comodo, version 3 is a completely new security solution with many new features and additions and can not be simply compared to older 2.x versions. For a full list, see Comodo Firewall Pro - Features and Benefits. Version 3 runs on 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista. And as usual for Comodo software, this product is absolutely free.
ESET Smart Security (2007/11/06 20:40)
ESET, the vendor of the well known anti-virus software NOD32, launched their new product called ESET Smart Security. It consists of four basic components: Antivirus, Antispyware, Antispam and (most importantly) Personal firewall. The suggested retail price for an individual user license is 59.99 USD. ESET Smart Security runs on both 32 and 64bit platforms and is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
Outpost 2008 (2007/10/22 19:12)
Agnitum Ltd. released 2008 series of their popular firewall products Outpost Firewall Pro and Outpost Security Suite Pro. The vendor promises improved security, compatibility, usability and also performance. Outpost is now fully compatible with Windows Vista on both 32 and 64 bit platforms, supports IPv6, require less computer resources. For a full list of enhancements, read What’s New in Outpost Firewall Pro 2008 or Outpost Security Suite Pro 2008.
Online Armor Free (2007/10/17 17:03)
Tall Emu Pty Ltd released a free version of their personal firewall product called Online Armor Free edition. Take a look at the comparison table of Online Armor editions. The new free version contains a fully functional personal firewall engine, which was previously available in the commercial versions only.
Hacker Challenge 2007 (2007/10/05 11:51)
David and Jakub of our research team attended Hacker Challenge 2007. The contest focused on reverse engineering skills. In the first phase of the contest, the participants were asked to crack the software protection of a Windows binary and to reverse a mathematical formula it implemented. Its second phase was about estimating skills of potential attackers.
Although reverse engineering and cracking software protections is not their everyday activity, under initials dm, David and Jakub submitted the most quality report from all participants and took the second place in the phase two of the challenge, as you can see on the contest's result page. This makes them unofficial winners of the first and second phase in total. If possible they will participate in the third phase of the challenge too, which is expected to be announced in November this year. Congratulations!
Kaspersky Internet Security 7 (2007/08/07 22:04)
The English version of Kaspersky Internet Security 7 is finally out. Check the vendor's news for more information about it. KIS 7 promises to be 100% Vista ready with better protection than ever before. The single licence with one year updates and support is available for $79.95.
New versions of Online Armor and Look 'n' Stop (2007/06/08 22:09)
Online Armor Personal Firewall v2 is a new firewall product, which comes with a lot of interesting features. Stable version 2 has been released just a few days ago and we will leak-test it in our next leak-testing update.
Look 'n' Stop Firewall version 2.06 has been released. The new version offers many enhancements compared to the older version 2.05. One of the greatest improvements is Windows Vista support.
Jetico 2 released (2007/05/02 15:09)
The first stable release of Jetico Personal Firewall v.2 is out. Its vendor, Jetico, Inc., has marked version 2.0.0.30 as final. The version 2 is not free, a licence for a single computer with one year support is avilable for 39.95 EUR (USD resp. for customers outside EU). Jetico is one of two personal firewalls with Excellent level of anti-leak protection.
Yet another phishing scam (2007/04/20 11:27)
A few months ago, I have wrote a blog entry about phishing. Yesterday, I have experienced another very similar case. Again, the phisher was not clever enough to hide the database of victims and thus I was able to assemble a list of victims and verify their PayPal login information. I have sent an email to those, who typed a valid login information to the scam page. Unfortunatelly, this case was little worse than the previous one in its impact on the victims, because they also gave their credit cards information to the phisher. At least 23 accounts were compromised until now and the scam page is still active. Naturally, I have informed PayPal about this case. Today, I have checked some of the accounts from yesterday. Login information have changed in a few cases, but others are still compromised. So, why these accounts were not blocked by PayPal as I requested?
David