PA38 and others who will no doubt be interested.
Like many others I used Lockdown 2000 before I realised it was little better than a well hyped con.
I am now using ZoneAlarm as a firewall ( refer test below ) and it a hugely useful piece of kit !!
I went to the Steve Gibson vulnerability test site and it came through with a perfect score.
Whilst you can never be totally secure here, I am now confident that I have the best moat freeware can buy right now.
I have joined up for the Steve Gibson email update service and have reprinted the first to be received as a hopefully useful service to the guys and gals in aviation and hopefully as a thank you to Steve Gibson who shall be herinafter referred to as Saint Steve until proven otherwise to me.
Internet Privacy:
OptOut?
Several weeks ago a scare swept through the Internet community
regarding alleged Internet "spying" being done by a very
popular advertising system known as "Aureate" (now renamed to
"Radiate".) Since the Aureate system is "carried" into the
user's PC by more than 400 popular freeware programs (like
Go!Zilla, GetRight, CuteFTP, and others), and is currently
installed and running in over TWENTY-TWO MILLION PC's!!, the
threat that this software was "spying" on its users was of
great and immediate concern.
My initial analysis of the Aureate system revealed that MUCH
of what had been claimed was completely unfounded. However,
that analysis DID raise enough concern and questions that I
decided to look further...
What I discovered was that this system WAS secretly running as
a "parasite" on your Netscape or Microsoft web browser, using
your browser's Internet connection to communicate with Aureate
servers in the background without the user's knowledge or
explicit permission! This meant that the Aureate software was
running and communicating over the Internet even when the
hosting "carrier" freeware, which brought it into the system,
was not running! This browser "parasite" had also been
implicated in frequent crashes of those browsers. And even
after the "freeware" which brought this parasitic software
into the user's machine had been completely removed, THE
AUREATE SYSTEM REMAINED INSTALLED AND OPERATING SECRETLY!
This was not okay.
A reading of Aureate's developer web site shows that the
freeware authors are receiving payment from the advertisers
in direct proportion to the number of advertisements actually
viewed and the length of time they are shown. In order to do
this, the actaul use of the various programs MUST be monitored
and reported back to Aureate.
This bothered me too.
So ... since I already knew of other similar sounding problems
with "Adbots" being secretly installed in user's machines (The
ZoneAlarm firewall discovered a different one running in my
own machine!), I decided to create an easy-to-use tool to
check for the presence of known "baddies" and -- optionally --
remove them from the computer for the user.
The program is called "OptOut" because it allows users to "opt
out" of the use of unwanted advertising software on their
machines.
I wrote it in 100% assembly language over the past two weeks,
it's a nifty little 32K bytes in size ... and the "Preview
Release" is ready for you to use right now!
Please see the new "OptOut" page on the grc.com web site for
more information and news about Aureate and OptOut. You can
download it from there too...
<a href= "http://grc.com/optout.htm" >Our OptOut Site</a>
ZoneAlarm Update:
The FREE ZoneAlarm firewall is evolving nicely and I expect to
soon be able to recommend it without reservation. Version 2.1
is currently in beta testing, and is really working VERY well.
It adds the significant new feature of "event logging" so that
a record of blocked Internet traffic is preserved.
ZoneLabs has given me permission to point you to their version
2.1 beta page, where you can download and experiment with this
very nicely developing free personal firewall:
<a href= "http://www.zonelabs.com/beta_download.htm" >ZA Beta</a>
My Current Internet Security/Privacy Project:
As you might have guessed, my work on the new OptOut freeware
has diverted my attention away from work on the hyper-speed
port scanner. I will be working on the new OptOut web site for
a while, and enhancing the OptOut program to detect and remove
several other known "spyware" systems. Once OptOut is firmly
in place, I plan to return to work on the hyper-speed port
scanner.
____________________________________________________________ _____
Thanks for your time. I hope this has been useful to you.
Steve Gibson. <a href= "http://grc.com/" >GRC Website</a>