Antimalware, firewall, and other security programs for Windows XP working in 2023 and hopefully beyond

[Saxon]

On 7/7/2023 at 1:59 PM, AstroSkipper said:

Comodo Firewall was founded in in the United Kingdom by Melih Abdulhayoğlu in 1998. The company Xcitium, formerly known as Comodo Security Solutions, Inc., is a cybersecurity company, in the meanwhile headquartered in the USA, New Jersey, since 2004. It was a very good firewall in the past. A lot of settings could be done. I would say Comodo Firewall was rather targeting the more advanced user. Anyway! I used it in the past until I became aware of Windows Firewall Control from Sphinx. Users reported in the Comodo Forum that the last error-free working version under Windows XP has been Comodo Firewall 8.4.0.5165. More recent versions didn't seem to work properly under Windows XP although they were advertised to be compatible to this OS. That had annoyed many users. I personally never used it again after I had changed to Windows Firewall Control. But in that days, Comodo Firewall was one of the best. Unfortunately, its installation packages became bloated due to implementing an antivirus solution. These packages are called Comodo Internet Security. I don't like bloated software packages, though. Hope I could help you a bit. 

United Kingdom, one of my favourites! I learnt British English at school. I'm sorry I misspelt the Komodo name, I didn't even think it would be that humorous! I'll test older versions then, report back!

Muchly appreciated! Ta muchly!

[AstroSkipper]

6 minutes ago, Saxon said:

United Kingdom, one of my favourites! I learnt British English at school. I'm sorry I misspelt the Komodo name, I didn't even think it would be that humorous! I'll test older versions then, report back!

Muchly appreciated! Ta muchly!

Misspelling doesn't matter at all and was not the reason I had to laugh. It was the zoological classification of this firewall.  Personally, I found it funny. And a bit of humour definitely can't hurt in this thread. In any case, thanks for your interest and support!

[Vistapocalypse]

One firewall that I strongly disliked was ZoneAlarm.  If there was ever a time when ZoneAlarm was good, it was certainly not when I tried it (around 2013-2014). It could not even clean up its own temp files (I think that was when I started using CCleaner), and I recall forum posts pointing out memory leaks. AstroSkipper is wise not to waste his time writing an article about ZoneAlarm. (It looks like filehippo has a 14.3.119 download that would perhaps work on XP/Vista, but I cannot recommend it. )

Edited July 9, 2023 by Vistapocalypse
less harsh language in 1st sentence

[Cocodile]

8 hours ago, Vistapocalypse said:

One firewall that I absolutely hated was ZoneAlarm.  If there was ever a time when ZoneAlarm was good, it was certainly not when I tried it (around 2013-2014). It could not even clean up its own temp files (I think that was when I started using CCleaner), and I recall forum posts pointing out memory leaks. AstroSkipper is wise not to waste his time writing an article about ZoneAlarm. (It looks like filehippo has a 14.3.119 download that would perhaps work on XP/Vista, but I cannot recommend it. )

ZoneAlarm is a jewish software, from Israel, perhaps this is what that member meant, when he wrote his "Notes" about "improper racist nature" at MSFN. Otherwise, I have no idea why would he write that. As for my opinion, there's no racism with you, not wanting to use that particular software, you're a customer, a user, so please continue. My experience with it was short, so I can't say much, apart from what I already told about the origins of that software. I actually don't make prejudgements, so I intalled it and tried. It seemed like it was a bit overcomplicated to use and didn't have enough configuration templates, maybe a bit heavy for that old celeron XP laptop of mine. Do you recall anything odd? Like calling home to Israel? Knocking on funny IP? Perhaps give it another chance? We all now have better hardware, no?

Founded: 1993, Ramat Gan, Israel

President: Amnon Bar-Lev

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_Point

[NotHereToPlayGames]

Unsure if it's been mentioned yet - is Clamwin still around?

[Cocodile]

3 hours ago, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Unsure if it's been mentioned yet - is Clamwin still around?

Yes it was already mentioned by @D.Draker. Yes, it's still around.

[UCyborg]

On 7/8/2023 at 12:10 AM, silverni said:

But today in reality the main source of infection is the Web, and the most dangerous vehicles are browsers; here the variables and defense mechanisms are virtually infinite, so I subscribe to the need posed by @UCyborg to create a new dedicated thread:
Maybe we need a thread about surviving on the modern internet without an antivirus?

It seems to me that over the years, software also got more resilient in general. I remember early days of XP when we got internet access for the first time, the computer had to be formatted the first week, thing were popping up left and right. The contributing factors must have been Internet Explorer 6 + run everything as admin by default approach. Although I can't make a clear comparison in my mind because it was on computer that was used by the entire family and I was just a dumb kid back then. Today, I can just leave them with Windows Defender + uBlock Origin in their web browser and don't have to worry about their computers getting messed up by malicious software.

I remember @Sampei.Nihira mentioning at some point using PsExec in XP to run a web browser with limited rights. I wonder if anyone here uses limited account in Windows, which I personally prefer over running things explicitly with limited rights while the default is admin rights. Sudo for Windows can be used for convenience of having a right-click context menu to run stuff as admin when needed, though it was last updated in 2013 and it could have holes.

Sure some naughty things can still be done with limited rights, but still there's no reason for common software to have write access to various sensitive parts of the system. AFAIK, Chrome goes out of the way to lock access to various Windows APIs from its renderer process.

On 7/8/2023 at 4:18 AM, NotHereToPlayGames said:

Not sure how much traction that would attract.  The end-consumer is more interested in something like uBlock Origin and "downloaded lists" doing as much of the work as possible "for them", an ideology I myself do not subscribe to.

When life gives you those lists, use them. I mean what's the point of having a computer if you have to do everything manually then? If the person A uses those lists and doesn't get infected and person B doesn't use those lists, but spends a lot of time time effectively re-inventing those lists...why become person A if that time could be spent on something more interesting?

[Dixel]

3 hours ago, UCyborg said:

When life gives you those lists, use them. I mean what's the point of having a computer if you have to do everything manually then? If the person A uses those lists and doesn't get infected and person B doesn't use those lists, but spends a lot of time time effectively re-inventing those lists...why become person A if that time could be spent on something more interesting?

Maybe he just trains his skills? I knew a guy who only used a huge hosts file with his XP machine instead of FW, the file was so huge, it slowed down his PC to a crawl, he edited it every couple of days or so, 

[UCyborg]

Sure, didn't want to imply not using manual nit-picky approach if desired, just wanted to point out they're genuinely useful resource and there are indeed people working on keeping them up-to-date, so it's still a heavy weight off regular user's shoulder.

I tried huge hosts file with bad domain list on an old 2012 smartphone once. Made it unusable. Poor thing has 600 MHz single-core ARM(v6) CPU and 384 MB of RAM.

[AstroSkipper]

Subject: ZoneAlarm

Here is my assessment on the firewall solution ZoneAlarm I wrote in another thread in June of 2022:

On 6/2/2022 at 6:18 PM, AstroSkipper said:

I had used ZoneAlarm Firewall for a long time in the past, long time ago. All versions of ZA v4 and v5 too. It was a good firewall at that time. But it was never a very stable and reliable one. Some versions were more stable, others less. Nowadays I wouldn't use any of these versions. The reason is there are much more better firewall solutions available, more stable and more recent without the problems I had to observe in the case of ZA. Some connections were not really blocked contrary to my settings. A lot of hanging at startup and so on. In those days I replaced ZA by Sygate Personal Firewall Professional which was much better than ZA. But for me, all these solutions are obsolete. The best firewall I have ever used is definitely Windows 10 Firewall Control XP Plus 7.5. No problems, no hanging and no unwanted connections anymore. So, spoken for me only, I have to say: Bye, Bye, ZA and all old not always properly working firewall solutions!   
And rest in peace! 

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

Nevertheless, I reserve the right to decide whether or not to write an article about ZoneAlarm. At the moment, it is on my internal list of security programmes. Maybe, someone who is still using ZoneAlarm on Windows XP can post their experiences here. The more, the better! 

@Monroe Are you still using ZoneAlarm on Windows XP? 

AstroSkipper

Edited July 9, 2023 by AstroSkipper
Update of content

[AstroSkipper]

11 hours ago, UCyborg said:

It seems to me that over the years, software also got more resilient in general. I remember early days of XP when we got internet access for the first time, the computer had to be formatted the first week, thing were popping up left and right. The contributing factors must have been Internet Explorer 6 + run everything as admin by default approach.

Right! I definitely can confirm that. Surfing the web with IE 6, malicious windows were popping up left and right. All became better when Firefox appeared and the first content blocker extensions. I started to use Firefox with extensions from the very first. And I also think that software got more resilient over the years in general.

11 hours ago, UCyborg said:

When life gives you those lists, use them. I mean what's the point of having a computer if you have to do everything manually then? If the person A uses those lists and doesn't get infected and person B doesn't use those lists, but spends a lot of time time effectively re-inventing those lists...why become person A if that time could be spent on something more interesting?

Yep! I think so, too. Although there are a lot of things I do manually, it does not make sense to re-invent the wheels.

Edited July 9, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

4 hours ago, Dixel said:

Maybe he just trains his skills? I knew a guy who only used a huge hosts file with his XP machine instead of FW, the file was so huge, it slowed down his PC to a crawl, he edited it every couple of days or so, 

Yep! Using the hosts file instead of a good firewall does not make any sense and is counterproductive.

[AstroSkipper]

11 hours ago, Cocodile said:

Yes it was already mentioned by @D.Draker. Yes, it's still around.

Yep! But there were definition update problems in the past. And the programme itself doesn't seem to be regularly updated anymore. The last ClamWin version  0.103.2.1 is from June 2021, unfortunately.

Edited July 9, 2023 by AstroSkipper

[AstroSkipper]

8 hours ago, AstroSkipper said:

Subject: ZoneAlarm

Here is my assessment on the firewall solution ZoneAlarm I wrote in another thread in June of 2022:

On 6/2/2022 at 6:18 PM, AstroSkipper said:

I had used ZoneAlarm Firewall for a long time in the past, long time ago. All versions of ZA v4 and v5 too. It was a good firewall at that time. But it was never a very stable and reliable one. Some versions were more stable, others less. Nowadays I wouldn't use any of these versions. The reason is there are much more better firewall solutions available, more stable and more recent without the problems I had to observe in the case of ZA. Some connections were not really blocked contrary to my settings. A lot of hanging at startup and so on. In those days I replaced ZA by Sygate Personal Firewall Professional which was much better than ZA. But for me, all these solutions are obsolete. The best firewall I have ever used is definitely Windows 10 Firewall Control XP Plus 7.5. No problems, no hanging and no unwanted connections anymore. So, spoken for me only, I have to say: Bye, Bye, ZA and all old not always properly working firewall solutions!   
And rest in peace! 

Cheers, AstroSkipper 

Expand  

Nevertheless, I reserve the right to decide whether or not to write an article about ZoneAlarm. At the moment, it is on my internal list of security programmes. Maybe, someone who is still using ZoneAlarm on Windows XP can post their experiences here. The more, the better! 

@Monroe Are you still using ZoneAlarm on Windows XP? 

AstroSkipper

I forgot to mention that the last compatible version of ZoneAlarm for XP was the version 14.3.119.000. Here is a link where the EOL of ZA was announced: https://support.zonealarm.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001849832-Is-the-Windows-XP-operating-system-still-supported-by-ZoneAlarm-products-

Cheers, AstroSkipper

[Vistapocalypse]

11 hours ago, UCyborg said:

I wonder if anyone here uses limited account in Windows, which I personally prefer over running things explicitly with limited rights while the default is admin rights.

Perhaps slightly OT since UAC was more advanced in Vista than XP, but yes I used a standard account for all web browsing and nearly everything else except installing/uninstalling software. The concept is similar to sandboxing. If a standard account is exploited, you can just create another one.

11 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Today, I can just leave them with Windows Defender + uBlock Origin in their web browser and don't have to worry about their computers getting messed up by malicious software.

Even more OT since Microsoft offers no more protection for XP diehards, but the efficacy of their protection is precisely why the antivirus industry found itself in a “merge or perish” situation. Times are changing, and a Norton user recently posted about an Avast file on his computer:

https://community.norton.com/en/forums/avastscandumptxt