At 10:47 05/01/04, Preston Smith wrote:
>I just installed an INEXQ Broadband Router plus USB Printer Port
>(model ISW054u).  It provides not only a 802.11g wireless
>capability but also the ability to hardwire in 3 other computers
>in addition to the host. As usual, it also provides a firewall
>capability.
>
>Do I need to continue running Zone Alarm Pro 4.0 on both my laptop
>and desktop when in a hardwired or wireless mode?

Hi Preston

I've had a broadband router/firewall for a couple of years now.
And I've been using Zone Alarm Pro all that time.

Let me tell you a true story.

Just last week I was wondering if it was really necessary to run
Zone Alarm along with the router/firewall. It's a ZyXel ZyWall
10 router which is also an ICSA officially certified firewall.
(For what that's worth.) I have it set for maximum protection.

Two days ago a Zone Alarm popup alert appeared asking if I
wanted to allow Windows Media Player to access the Internet.
This was a first for me because I was not using the Internet
or trying to use any audio or video files. But I was curious
and checked the Zone Alarm log. It indicated that wmplayer.exe
had tried to access several non Microsoft IP addresses and
websites. I checked the wmplayer.exe file and found that it
appeared corrupted (was not a Microsoft file anymore, not even
a Windows executable file). And it was now set to run every
time the computer was booted. This file was not recognized as
dangerous by either Norton or Kasperski Antivirus.

I deleted the registry key that would run wmplayer.exe at boot,
deleted the suspicious file, and reinstalled Windows Media
player. The file wmplayer.exe is now very different in size
and is again officially a Microsoft executable file.

I've never had anything like that happen before, never even had
a computer virus. But something got into my system, presumably
while web browsing or as part of a downloaded file. (I do scan
all downloads but don't have Internet Explorer set for the
highest security because I find that it makes browsing too
difficult.)

Zone Alarm kept something from calling out to the Internet and
possibly doing me harm. I always figured that nothing could get
onto my system that would try to do this, but it seems to have
happened. (I don't allow any program on my system to "call home"
automatically for updates. I check for Microsoft and antivirus
updates manually every day.)

The morale of all this is...

A firewall/router will (hopefully) protect you from letting things
get into your system without your permission...but will *not*
protect you from letting things already on your system call out
to the Internet. Without a software firewall, something on your
system could establish a connection and let someone else get
control of your computer. (Your computer could be used as a spam
server or used as part of mass denial of service attacks on other
Internet addresses or just to find out private information about
you.)

So I do believe that you need both a hardware firewall (like a
broadband router) and a software firewall. A good software
firewall (configured correctly) might on occasion be better
than just a router alone....but having both would be optimal.

Regards,
Bill

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