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The best free firewall / antivirus programs

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Nimsky

Nimsky

Grizzled Veteran
Nov 22, 2005
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Elitist Prick Nude Beach
#1
Well, last time I checked both Sygate and AVG (two perfectly fine programs) were bought up by Norton... damn corporations. I'm going to reinstall Windows (and start using Linux for the first time) so I need a replacement for the firewall / antivirus stuff. As we all know, Norton sucks, so my question is...

What is the best free firewall, and which antivirus program would you recommend? One thing the firewall should be able to do is show a popup every time a new program wants to connect to the internet, so I can easily alt-tab out of my games and give them access whenever I want them to.

Thanks!
 
#5
Been through all the AV programs and have settled for Avast. I have just renewed my license, so its up and running for the 3rd year.
Free, daily updates and runs quietly in the background.

Don't know about Fire Walls, just using the one that comes with Windows, it seems to do its job well enough.

CrapCleaner for getting rid of unwanted cookies and crap in general.
You would be amazed at how much crap is accumulated in a week of surfing ze webs.
 
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#6
fiftyone said:
Been through all the AV programs and have settled for Avast. I have just renewed my license, so its up and running for the 3rd year.
Free, daily updates and runs quietly in the background.

Don't know about Fire Walls, just using the one that comes with Windows, it seems to do its job well enough.

CrapCleaner for getting rid of unwanted cookies and crap in general.
You would be amazed at how much crap is accumulated in a week of surfing ze webs.
Click to expand...

I can bet your *** and mine that the Windows firewall is not doing it's job properly :p

Go here: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Press Proceed, and then test "all service ports"

I myself got FULL STEALTH ;)









try2h4xmedk5.jpg

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.
 
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#7
myzko said:
I can bet your *** and mine that the Windows firewall is not doing it's job properly :p

Go here: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Press Proceed, and then test "all service ports"

I myself got FULL STEALTH ;)
Click to expand...

I hope you realize how easy it is to get full stealth on that. I'm using nothing more than Avast and the Firewall in Vista behind a modem/router box combo. The modem/router combo is one that a lot of people are probably using already and that, coupled with the Vista Firewall seems to do just fine to pass that test. As for complete control? No, it sucks.

 
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#8
Zips said:
I hope you realize how easy it is to get full stealth on that. I'm using nothing more than Avast and the Firewall in Vista behind a modem/router box combo. The modem/router combo is one that a lot of people are probably using already and that, coupled with the Vista Firewall seems to do just fine to pass that test. As for complete control? No, it sucks.

Click to expand...

noob you censored your ip:D

In any case, this test is quite old and Windows did not have such a good firewall back then, maybe they've improvd'

But I still prefer inbound and outbound control :p
 
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#10
myzko said:
try2h4xmedk5.jpg

Your system has achieved a perfect "TruStealth" rating. Not a single packet — solicited or otherwise — was received from your system as a result of our security probing tests. Your system ignored and refused to reply to repeated Pings (ICMP Echo Requests). From the standpoint of the passing probes of any hacker, this machine does not exist on the Internet. Some questionable personal security systems expose their users by attempting to "counter-probe the prober", thus revealing themselves. But your system wisely remained silent in every way. Very nice.
Click to expand...

nmap 80.216.216.75 -P0
anyone?

like a succesfull ping is required to attack or only connect to a system :D
A decent admin and iptables makes a good firewall imo ;)

btw. why tf the first 1055 ports, privileged ports are below 1024, and rootkits and trojans run in the upper regions anyway.

Trivia: which trojan used port 31337 :D
 
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#12
Hmm, just looked on the AVG site and I guess they're still free. I could've sworn they were bought over when I last went to the website a few months ago.

Sygate however doesn't exist anymore. :( Too bad, was a good firewall and I'm still using it right now. But I bet it's not really up-to-date anymore.

http://www.symantec.com/norton/sygate/index.jsp

I'll check out the firewalls you guys mentioned, thanks.
 
Upvote 0
#14
worluk said:
nmap 80.216.216.75 -P0
anyone?

like a succesfull ping is required to attack or only connect to a system :D
A decent admin and iptables makes a good firewall imo ;)

btw. why tf the first 1055 ports, privileged ports are below 1024, and rootkits and trojans run in the upper regions anyway.

Trivia: which trojan used port 31337 :D
Click to expand...

Why the first 1056 Ports?

Internet ports are numbered from 1 through 65535, but the first 1023 ports are special. By tradition, and some enforcement, ports 1 through 1023 are generally reserved for the acceptance of incoming connections by services running on the receiving system. Internet services "listen" on various standard low-numbered ports so that clients wishing to have access to those services know where they may be found. Web servers traditionally listen on port 80, eMail servers listen on ports 25 and 110, FTP servers listen on port 21 and Telnet servers listen on port 23. And the list goes on. Here's the official Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) port assignment list.

Although it is possible to have higher-numbered ports listening for incoming connections, our scan of the entire "service port range" will detect all standard services running and listening on the standard service ports.

Due to the insecure behavior of Microsoft's Windows operating systems, we have added an additional 33 ports to these first 1023 ports, bringing the total to 1056. Windows has a tendency to establish globally available listening services on the first few ports in the "client port" range which begins just past 1023. If you are not running a personal firewall, or you are allowing ShieldsUP! probes into your network, you may discover one or more additional open ports at, or just above, 1024.
Click to expand...


That site is waaay old anyway.. :p

No idea about that trojan, and I don't feel like googling and pretending to be smart..! tell usss
 
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#15
Well, I installed the Comodo firewall that was recommended in the thread, but now every time I try to luanch any Source engine based game it doesn't even start (no splash screen or anything), it gets to about 36000k mem usage and 29000k vm usage, and then the normal Windows error box pops up asking if I want to report the error or not. Any of you guys know what the problem may be?
 
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