Best Free Antivirus/firewall?

[Hanz™]

NOD32/Kapersky is the only way to go.
And for the firewall Outpost works well.

Those are light and efficient solutions I think.

 

[TJHooker]

It's a proven fact that if you want to harden a windows system you can't rely on consumer software sites, magazine articles, or pretty much any mainstream article publishing medium. You have to see what the attackers are using in real time to subvert any up to date firewall solution.

When I was working at a small hosting company here in NC from 2001 to 2003 the few windows systems we had(2 clients and 1 server) didn't have any firewall solutions installed. We instead used OpenBSD based gateways/DMZs with something based on the same model as the Packet Filter solution(now referred to as PF Firewall.)

That along with the often times ignored windows security policy's, and other administrative tools kept us safe from pretty much any external, and most internal threats.

I actually use a Windows XP SP2 system to surf the Internet. It's also efficient because I currently work for a multimedia solution company that works with ActionScript based development tools exclusively, and open source alternatives are lacking, or halted in there development.

I haven't had any external security penetrations on this machine since I've had it(about two years.) I use zone alarm with Firefox, and a well configured security policy for guest, and admin accounts. Also I use the SP2 memory corruption system; even though my processor doesn't support it I can still use the software part of it. Technically I could remove zone alarm based on my current security policy, and not have to worry since I have no servers running. If anything where to happen in Firefox the SP2 memory corruption system handles heap, buffer, and stack overflows, so no shellcode attacks would work.

Also according to Secunia over the past 7 years most viruses, and worms where propagated via human intervention; to be more specific people downloaded, and installed malware on there own system. The remote exploit worms are a very big minority compared to malware that takes advantage of peoples lack of common sense. Most articles refer to email propagation as "social engineering." I've seen some of the scam emails, and they where so obviously fake it was scary that people fell for them.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

It's a proven fact that if you want to harden a windows system you can't rely on consumer software sites, magazine articles, or pretty much any mainstream article publishing medium. You have to see what the attackers are using in real time to subvert any up to date firewall solution.

Fair comment, for me the only real way is to use some form of hardware firewall, the minimum should be a NAT based router which is the most popular for the home user. Never ever connect your PC directly to the internet, you're asking for trouble if you do.

Also according to Secunia over the past 7 years most viruses, and worms where propagated via human intervention; to be more specific people downloaded, and installed malware on there own system. The remote exploit worms are a very big minority compared to malware that takes advantage of peoples lack of common sense. Most articles refer to email propagation as "social engineering." I've seen some of the scam emails, and they where so obviously fake it was scary that people fell for them.

Absolutely correct! I get soo many people saying things like "My PC is useless, it's soo slow" or "This darned thing keeps crashing". On inspection it is full of spyware and trash apps that they have installed thinking they are there to make their system run better. I personally hate automatic registry tools and apps pretending to be useful calenders from horrible companies like GAIN and software like Winspeed that claims to speed up windows (Don't make me laugh). It's happy days after removing them all.

The thing us computer people have to remember is that a lot of the general public use PCs and don't really know anything about them. An analogy of this is myself and cars: I can drive but if anything goes wrong with it I am totally stumped. I wrecked a car I owned once because I had no idea where the oil went, so I ignored it and a trip to London killed the poor thing. Quite a lot of computer users are the same, they can chat, surf and read emails, but what's all this about security? So it gets ignored. And the most amazing thing is, I have come across soo many Comp Sci students that their PCs are often in a worse state than my friend Donna at home with two teenage daughters who download anything that's free, especially if it means they get free music. They know not what the term "peer to peer" means :huh:

 

[Goity]

It's amazing how some people manage to use their PCs without them exploding or something, though come to mention it, that Bonsaibuddy does look kinda cool...

I once met someone who believed they knew everything there was to know about computers. His computer was ridden with spyware, malware, adware, badware, sadware, basically his computer was a petri dish for crap. He wouldn't let me sort it however, since he knew so much about computers. He told me that he didn't have an antispyware program, a firewall or even an antivirus program on there, because they slowed down his computer too much. LOL.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

It's amazing how some people manage to use their PCs without them exploding or something, though come to mention it, that Bonsaibuddy does look kinda cool...

I once met someone who believed they knew everything there was to know about computers. His computer was ridden with spyware, malware, adware, badware, sadware, basically his computer was a petri dish for crap. He wouldn't let me sort it however, since he knew so much about computers. He told me that he didn't have an antispyware program, a firewall or even an antivirus program on there, because they slowed down his computer too much. LOL.

LMAO what "as we in the trade call" an ejit!!!!

I do know what you mean though. I get only what I can describe as "Children" turning up, know it all and present me with a faulty PC. They look at me as if I am stoopid and really hate it when a girl tells them what they did wrong! That really hurts their ego, especially when they bring all their mates along to pick the machine up and I tell them "You need to connect the molex connector to your graphics card correctly, and if a pin falls out of the connector, not to stick it in anywhere next time, as you just connected the 12v to the common and have killed your PCIe port" .