Tag: FIREWALL

While China has a history of blocking computer users' access to many sites on the world wide interwebs, many clever Chinese citizens have figured out that RSS feeds provided a way around the Chinese firewall. Until now. Ars Technica reports that China has started blocking any URL that starts with "feeds," "rss," and "blog." That makes it pretty difficult to access the feeds for an awful lot of ...

Sure, Windows comes with a basic firewall, but when it comes to protecting your computer from malicious attacks, you can never be too careful. PC Tools Firewall Plus is a powerful firewall from the makers of Spyware Doctor. And it also happens to be free. PC Tools Firewall Plus gives you much more control over your firewall than the built in Windows Firewall application. There's an expert mode ...

So I'm sitting here on a brand new Windows install (more on that later) and thinking, "I have got to get a real firewall up." The trouble is, I'm extraordinarily cheap. For a long time I've been using Sygate Personal Firewall--so long, in fact, that in the time since Symantec has acquired Sygate and killed the poor thing off. It's still available elsewhere on the internets, but is there a better ...

There are tons of threatening viruses, spyware, and other yucky things out there in the world wide web. They have the powers to potentially access your computer if it is not locked down with security software, ensuring there are no kinds of intrusions and any malicious hacking going on. Is your computer protected against the many potentially dangerous things floating around the internet? Do you ...

We've heard no end to Microsoft's boasting about Windows Vista's first-rate security features, and yet here comes news that by default Vista's built-in firewall, though it has the capability, will not block any outgoing traffic. Wuh? Microsoft says half of the firewall will be disabled because corporate and government customers "would like to manage this feature from an administrator ...

Symantec is making loud noises about its new "Security 2.0" initiative, which will usher in "a new age of trust on the Internet." What is it? Well, it's some new products with a snappy name. The first product is an unnamed app resulting from Symantec's recent acquisition of WholeSecurity that's designed to prevent phishing. The second is a big new package Symantec is calling ...

Microsoft has made much of Windows OneCare, its new security bundle that includes, among other things, a firewall. It turns out, however, that in its default configuration OneCare's firewall is full of holes. According to InfoWorld's Roger Grimes, OneCare automatically permits all traffic from two types of programs: Any program using the Java Virtual Machine, and any program digitally signed. ...

Oh, the irony. Bob Cringely reported a couple weeks back that PC firewall software ZoneAlarm 6.0 has been caught in the act of sending encrypted data back to four Zone Labs servers, even when communication settings in the program are disabled. Oops. After denying the reports for nearly two months, Zone Labs is now claiming that it's a bug, even though the connection instructions are specifically ...

Makers of firewall and anti-virus software are warning that RSS feeds could be the next big thing for spreading viruses. In this article from The Register, Trend Micro's marketing manager says, "RSS feeds point to HTML pages and as such, they can be made to point to HTML-exploits or malicious JavaScript. It certainly can be a possible way of distributing malicious code over the internet to ...