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Personal Firewalls Mostly Useless, Says Mail & Guardian
hweimer writes "More and more security researchs come to the conclusion that personal firewalls are ineffective in controlling outbound traffic. An article in the Mail & Guardian online mentions a test that 'showed that the software often causes more problems than it solves. Not one of the six firewall programs the magazine tested, regardless of whether commercial or freeware, could prevent all attempts from the test programs at establishing outgoing connections between the PC and the internet.' Simple PoCs are available, too."
Software firewalls 'solve' the same problem as antivirus software. They attempt to disallow stupid users from doing stupid things. For the most part, if people don't install unknown/untrusted software on their PCs, and use safer alternatives for online stuff (gaim, firefox, sylpheed vs. aol's own messenger, MSIE, Outlook) along with practicing safe online computing in general, personal firewalls add the same value as antivirus software. None.
For a skilled user (which these aren't marketed to anyway), there is value in anlyzing what your software is trying to open outbound connections to, if you tell your PFW to alert you. In the hands of a skilled user, this is good information and the PFW is a good tool to analyze what software you may want to ditch or restrict. Again, this isn't the demographic most PFW vendors market to. You can't use a tool like this without a basic knowledge of how TCP/IP works. Then again, maybe that should be required knowledge for any user who connects their computer to the Internet. We need licenses to show we are competent enough to drive cars, and this is the "Information Superhighway" after all.