Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Dilbert1234567
If you’re plugged directly into the internet, no router or anything, 600 are very low. The internet is really 'dirty' with tons of infected computers trying to share the love. get your self a router and use that as an additional firewall, its not a true firewall, but it will serve as one, and it will take some of the load off of your system. In addition, software firewalls are vulnerable for a few ms when they are starting, in theory, something could get past after the network card comes online, but before the firewall does.
|
There are many reasons not to use a software firewall. Once a packet has entered your computer there are a number of ways it could exploit or DOS you, either through the network driver (I believe this is becoming more and more common, especially since drivers are taking on more and more features, functionality and stuff that used to be in the hardware), it could exploit your TCP stack or kernel (unlikely but it happens) or it could exploit the firewall application itself. At any rate a software firewall is really just another app competing with other kernel apps and already running malware can find a way around it.
A windows XP computer sitting on the next fresh install is supposed to get 0wn3d within around 1 hour. There are probes going out all the time looking for fresh PCs and I am assuming you are on some kind of cable connection or something? If so you are even more of a target.
Ignore zonealarm its a reasonable product for what it is but I would never run any kind of windows direct on the internet. Pick up a linksys firewall and forget about it (forget about lame inbound probes not security in general, stay paranoid :-)