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Tiny Software Personal Firewall v1.0

A great ICSA certified software firewall
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Date: 2000-07-26 10:43
Author: S. McDougall
Category: Software
Manufacturer: Tiny Software
Product/Model: Personal Firewall
List Price: $29.00

Installation

I tested out the Firewall in both Windows 98se and Windows 2000. I didn't have any problems (of any kind) in either OS after using the Firewall for a period of days. Just as a note, almost all of the screenshots and security tests were done while in Windows2000.

I didn't see what I expected after the installation. The Firewall installation does not set the Firewall to run automatically. I love to see things that don't make a mess of my registry (cough - Norton), but there should have (at least) been an option during installation to configure the Firewall to start automatically with the system (or to run the Firewall as a service in Windows 2000). As it is, you will have to manually create a registry key or (more simply), copy a shortcut to the Firewall executable into your Startup folder on the Start Menu.

After starting the program only one process was listed relating to the Firewall. I have to say I think of this as a "plus". With some other Firewalls there is the Firewall software itself and a more hidden engine. Completely disabling a Firewall can be necessary at times, at you'll have one stop shopping (or closing) with this one. This is something I didn't like though, I could not find a way to remove the application button from the taskbar. I would very much prefer to be able to minimize the Firewall application down to the Systray icon only.

Click to expand
This is the application window. As you can see there's not a lot to look at. There is only one Menu Bar listing which contains selections for: Settings, Log Window, About, and Exit. The main window temporarily displays logging information which expires in a few minutes. However, a permanent text file with more detailed logging information is constantly updated. If you'll notice, I highlighted the column bar in yellow. I was a little annoyed when I discovered that the information can not be sorted by column, but it is only a temporally window.
Click to expand
This is the settings windows. The listed items are basically rules that you can create or that are created for you, with at least one default rule for your own network. The thing that seems to be missing here is any kind of port specification. I would like the ability to place (for example) an IP under normal or high security restrictions, yet allow it complete access to a specific port.

Also missing is the ability to remove ports or port ranges completely from the Firewalls protection. If (for example) I want to play Quake3 and run Quake3 servers, I might want to remove the "Quake" ports from the Firewalls security without having to lower the protections settings for the entire Firewall program. To run a game server you will need to disable the Firewall or set it to the "Low" security level. In my opinion the is the #1 feature they need to add.

Those two items are my biggest complaints with this this Firewall, and I hope that they can be added in a future release. This is only Version 1.0/Beta1 so there's still hope.

Click to expand
the window where you can create or modify security rules. You can give the rules a name and specify whether or not the rule applies to a whole group of computers (under the same domain/mask scheme). It's sleek and functional, but no bells and whistles.
Click to expand
These are the security settings available to any item on the settings list.
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These are the advanced options. The first option is selected by default and seemingly a nice feature. If you have any network operation in progress when the Firewall is started, it won't break that connection until the transaction is completed. The "Don't accept broadcast" option is for those with static IP addresses, in which case you'd want to choose this, because it will block broadcast of DHCP.
Click to expand
The permanent log provides detailed information. It appeared to have a set "roll-over" limit, but the list gets pretty long. What was missing here is that good 'ol attack logging style of BlackIce. If you've never used BlackIce before, it maintains a log of attacks and labels them by what type of attack they were. Further, you can select the attack and get detailed information about it from the BlackIce website. Sure it's nice to know that an unsolicited request came from IP 'xyz', but I'd like to know what kind of request (attack) it was, and what the purpose of the request was. Was it an OS sniff or a Telnet probe? Perhaps someone was port scanning trying to find systems running PC Anywhere.

Of course advanced logging like that doesn't make a Firewall good, and we already know that BlackIce has some holes in it. I'll admit it is eye candy, but I do enjoy knowing how violent my Internet connection can be. Also, I use to enjoy attacking the attackers. That only brings bad karma though, so I had to stop.

Let's do some testing.... 

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