ZDnet: Firewalls as safe as you think? Posted November 10, 2001 by Linux-2000 Staff
By Robert Lemos
ZDNet News

Consumers protecting their PCs with personal firewalls should not feel too comfortable in their defense methods, according to a security researcher.

PC protection software such as Zone Lab's ZoneAlarm and Symantec's Norton Internet Security fare well against outside attacks, but Trojan horses and worms that infect the machine can easily dodge the firewall's blocks and access the Net, said Robin Keir, chief software engineer for security services company Foundstone.

"Personal firewalls were not traditionally for stopping malicious programs from running on your computer," he said. Keir published a report and tool illustrating one set of flaws that allows a program to sneak out private data using Microsoft's Internet Explorer and AOL Time Warner's Netscape browsers.

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