comodo firewall 3.0

that's a French expression: no news, good news. As I'm not actually ready to spend half of my time configuring the advanced firewall in Vista, the only alternative I can imagine at this time is the upcoming 3.0 version of Comodo Firewall. This version will integrate a HIPS, as you might already know, and will be fully compatible with our new baby: Windows Vista. The only problem is that not even a beta has been released yet. Come on guys, we need that firewall again. I haven't posted in the Comodo Forum for a while no. Actually for the same reason: there's not much to comment in such a place when there's no beta testing anymore. Not that I miss these long and sometimes disappointing beta testing phases. but I really think that such a firewall, in his new version, without all the bugs that affected it in version 2.4 of course, is badly needed in Vista. If anyone from the dev team there reads this post, thanks in advance.
Here are the usual links to the web site and its forum:
http://www.comodogroup.com
http://forums.comodo.com

Vista Firewall (lol)

thanks for the article Justin, that confirms what I saw and why I haven't used it so far. You must create a rule to see something happen with this firewall, otherwise everything is allowed. Which means that you basically have to manually create one rule for each application that can potentially connect to the network. Can take bloody ages to achieve (lol) ! The argument from Microsoft to give a good out of the box experience of Vista, by not pre-configuring this "advanced" firewall is more than funny!

Windows Vista Firewall: Is it a full firewall?

Read the full article HERE.

CoreForce

sorry CoreForce, I don't like the interface. Don't want to spend a whole week configuring programs access to get my PC back online normally. Adding, almost none of the predefined profiles work well (community issues...), and Skype was not detected at all. Could connect with no permission at all. There was also this host file issue with MSN messenger, and the BSOD related to CoreForce drivers, that's it for now, will wait for Comodo Firewall 3.0, or something else.

CoreForce

First I want to thank Alg for this article. I can only advise new users of CoreForce to read it carefully. I confirm it's better to first deactivate Coreforce on first use, until you're done with some settings. Otherwise you'll get into issues without knowing what did what. And if you're worried about being hacked while you do that, just put windows firewall back on in the meantime. And don't forget to turn it off once CoreForce is active again!(that's a joke again Alg). I intended to reinstall CoreForce today, after my last bad experience with Comodo Firewall. More on it as it comes.

Think I solved the issue between CoreForce and MSN messenger. The error message I got after no being able to sign in with messenger while coreforce was active, was host file related. What I did is remove the entries put in the host file by Spybot S&D. After that I could just sign in again normally with msn messenger, and CoreForce active. That could mean that CoreForce has an entry in the host file that Spybot S&D doesn't like. I have not found which one yet. The list shown in Spybot is huge with no tool to edit or to search. As soon as I've got a host file utility installed, I will investigate.

Now going into new problems: can't have windows update running while CoreForce is on. Just found that interesting link about a user's experience with CoreForce and Cyber Hawk (Online Armor forum).

comodo firewall 2.4 ( the end?)

bad news for cfp 2.4, the 100% cpu load on cmdagent.exe happens again, 5 days after the installation. It does not really matter, there's CoreForce as alternative, and cfp 3.0 in two or three months. Funny thing is that cpu load always happens a few days after the installation of a new version. In the meantime back to old windows firewall, the best one, ever (lol).

comodo firewall version 2.4

I've used this new release, non-beta version for more than 4 days now. All I can say is that the cpu load on cmdagent.exe (comodo firewall service) is gone. In these conditions I can only advise desktop users looking for a free and performing solution to install this firewall. It includes features matching some of it's best commercial competitors:

- application, component and network monitor (ability to fully customize rules)
- connections and event logs
- animated tray icon showing traffic (switchable)
- advanced features including packet checksum verification
- adjustable alert frequency level ( valuable for experienced user)
- own registry keys protection
- misc. tasks including the ability to define a trusted network, a banned or trusted application

and a very good support team running a forum at: comodo forum
the firewall download link will be found on the comodo website.

it seems important to mention here that to the future of this firewall belongs a 3.0 version that will include a full HIPS (host intrusion prevention system), among other improvements (that's according to members of the development team at Comodo). A final version should be available in march or april this year (I guess beta testing will start in the coming weeks).

update on this post: Spyware Terminator auto-updated both its software and its database a bit earlier tonight on my PC, and as soon as I started again the UI after that, Comodo Firewall detected a change in the signature of ST.exe, hence I got an alert. Good, very good!

setting up MSN messenger with CoreForce

I just found that useful link in the CoreForce website.The document though does not seem to give special instructions for establishing special rules for MSN Messenger, but just takes it as an example on how to deal in general with CoreForce whenever you want to create a new profile for an application. Gonna go through the procedure anyway and see how it works. More as it comes. Many other technical documents included there.

for french readers only

please see this interesting post about firewalls from Alg at this link.

en fait la permission de pouvoir s'exprimer en francais dans ce blog,
ne s'adresse evidemment qu'a ceux qui n'ont pas le choix, et je leur
repondrai evidemment en francais.Bon allez, un petit commentaire en
francais de temps a autre, meme de la part d'un francais anglophone,
je laisserai passer(lol).

non-event of the day

the release of comodo firewall 2.4 ...( see my post in the french version of this blog). Here is a wonderful firewall alert. I could not live without it...

comodo firewall 2.4

I finally made it in downloading v 2.4 from comodo firewall. Going to temporarily uninstall CoreForce, just to give a try to 2.4, a last chance (lol), before 3.0.

ok, done and so far so good...bugs usually don't happen just after a new cpf install, it takes a few hours become they come, and a few days before cpu load becomes excessive. At the moment ram for cmdagent is 5 MB, and 8 MB for cpf.exe. Let's wait and see...more as it comes (lol).

2 hours later cpf.exe ram usage going up to 16 megs...came back to 8, boring, not much to say, it might be more stable than the betas...

coreforce issues with msn messenger

that's what I got when I try to launch MSN Messenger with CoreForce activated. Already tried to lower the security level but still get the same results. Might have to edit the host file to seen what's in it that coreforce might have added. See if I can post that in their forum. (if anyone could tell me how I could move these bloody pictures in the post, instead of just being able to resize them, just to get a nicer layout once posted, that would be great!) Could that be that the predefined rules from Coreforce for MSN don't apply, for a reason of file signature, because I'm running MSN Messenger 8.1 beta instead of release 8.0? Sounds it does not work even if I create the rules myself, by not loading the msn profile (predefined profile deleted), and just allowing what's got to be allowed during alerts while creating my own profile for the application (wizard).

comodo firewall 2.4

OK, now the beast is out (lol); would be nice if the site was not under maintenance, and one could download it... This firewall, after all, might not be as sophisticated as CoreForce is, but it is so user friendly, and one needs that too on a computer, but we don't need the bugs. The ui of comodo firewall is a very, very nice one. Hope it's performance will be as nice soon. Good luck cpf!
( Justin gave the link for cpf 2.4 download in his post underneath this one)

Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4 Released

Hello,

Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4 has finally been released you can download it at the Comodo Firewall Home Page

CoreForce: part 4 (forum)

the guys at CoreForce run a forum. Here is the link
otherwise as mentioned before, you can always mail the dev team
at support@force.coresecurity.com
(make sure you read the FAQ , user's manual and help file, or post a question in the forum before you do that)
I'll leave it there for now with my posts about CoreForce, Please leave your comments if you have any. Thanks.

p.s. one last thing: Coreforce seems to be able to run unsafe programs (?) in sandboxes, which I suppose means in a secure environment for the PC. Have not tried it yet...

CoreForce : part 3

I have now reinstalled CoreForce, so far so good. Got a few alerts, forgot to take some screenshots (lol). I'll do that next time I've got one. I probably made a mistake when switching one program from it's rule to trusted programs. Well the whole purpose of CoreForce seems to consist in establishing those rules, so getting rid of them just does not make sens. Shame on me one more time (lol).More as it comes...
Had some issues with connecting to gmail via thunderbird, went to the setup wizard from CoreForce UI to reconfigure the ports (for some reason I had not been prompted to do it at installation time..hmm.. because Coreforce kept some tracks from my first install,when I did not want to configure this first).
New issue, cannot get Windows Live Messenger running while CoreForce is activated. I get an error message from MSN telling me that some entries in the host file were modified; been ask if I wanted the wizard to clean these entries, answered yes, but it still doesn't work. I had to deactivate CoreForce to get MSN messenger running again. There's probably something about the profile of Messenger in CoreForce to change that I haven't found yet. Yes as you notice, applications have more than rules in CoreForce, they have a profile integrating much more parameters than the usual firewall rules. More on it as it comes...

CoreForce: part 2

CoreForce definitely runs at kernel level, monitoring registry entries and the file system access by the operating system and applications. So it's definitely a HIPS. It's firewall component also works at kernel level, with a driver interacting between your network card drivers and windows tcp/ip .
I strongly advise to uninstall any other HIPS program that you might have on your system, BEFORE you install and run Coreforce. I think the problems I got yesterday came from conflicts between Coreforce and Spyware Terminator. I will now totally deactivate ST and run CoreForce install again. More on it as it comes...

p.s.: shame on me, I just noticed in the GUI that CoreForce defines itself as a HIPS (lol).

Coreforce

thanks for posting Alg. I won't install cpf again, at least not before version 3.0. I found the link to Coreforce really interesting. The software looks extremely sophisticated, but not that easy to handle. I downloaded it yesterday, and when I rebooted, I started to get quite a few problems. System freezing shortly again and again, but no crash. Just the alerts reacted too slowly to my clicks. I had to uninstall to get my system work normally again, but I will reinstall, after I've read the user's manual carefully. The software seems to be a high-end mixture of a firewall and a HIPS,even if at the moment, I'm not even sure it can be called a HIPS; it reminds me a bit of System Safety Monitor (which I use); the big difference is that Coreforce is also a firewall, and from the type of alerts that I've noticed, a very efficient one. Also Coreforce works with profiles, with one profile dedicated to each application known from Coreforce; these profiles can be updated; I suppose that's why they call it a community software: the updates seem to come from other user's optimized config. Sounds like very, very new stuff.I said yesterday to someone that in compare, cpf looks like a toy for babies. I'm just a bit worried about this windows drivers warning during installation. Hope it doesn't matter.They're just not listed and tested by Microsoft. OK, for those who'd be interested, here is the link again. Just be advised, this program is really not for everyone.See here first for the pdf user's guide.Good luck !

more on this program later in this blog...

p.s.: CoreForce is still a beta. Consider watching the FAQ on their web site; there's also this address for support: support@force.coresecurity.com