Am I Missing Something Here?



  • After getting nailed by a particularly nasty trojan buried deep in the .cab files of an ISO image of some abandonware (thanks for nothing, AVG), I was forced to do a complete reinstall of Windows with the aid of a built-in recovery program that came with the machine. (It's called PC Angel if you're curious; my machine is a Foxconn OEM job I picked up secondhand.) It also restored the minimal bundled software; MS Works and Powerpoint Viewer and a 90-day trial version of BullGuard Firewall. I'd never heard of BullGuard, but figured I'd let it run to the end of the trial; my PC's behind a router and I only have a firewall installed at all for the infrequent occasions when I need to bypass it to troubleshoot something.

     In the eight days I've had BullGuard, I've seen over a dozen 'Intrusion Blocked' pop-ups. I can so far think of four possible explanations.

    1. Everything I thought I knew about routers is wrong, and the trouble I had uploading a torrent of the mixtape I made for some friends last Christmas was all in my head.

    2. The guy who set my landlady's home wireless network up, the previous tenant of this room, did something incredibly asinine when configuring the router. (Entirely possible, as by all accounts he wasn't very bright, but see above.)

    3. BullGuard Firewall is designed to throw up fake alerts to make it look useful.

    4. I'm going round the twist.

    What do you guys reckon?



  • Wireshark or snort.
    Windows (2003 server at least) comes bundled with similar software that I'm pretty sure was included with Windows 1.0 judging by the amazing quality of the buttons (seriously, they're grey-scale).



  • Sounds immensely useful, and with a dash of retro charm too. Much obliged.



  •  I thought BullGuard was either crap or malware, or both. I can't remember which.



  • The fact that it came bundled with the machine made me a little wary of it; they always seem to go with time-limited trial versions of obscure and/or ridiculously expensive software that invariably gets uninstalled the instant a knowledgeable user gets hold of it.

    At any rate, I've since discovered that it's actually a full security suite rather than just a firewall (that'll teach me to pay attention to the splash page) and therefore really has to go; an alleged anti-virus program with no apparent heuristic analysis function is not worth paying £30 for, though the firewall has been much less of a pain in the rear than Comodo was.


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