ZoneLabs Won't Fix Hole In Free Firewall

from the if-it's-free,-you-should-suffer-through dept

ZoneLabs provides the most popular “free” firewall product out there. It seems to be the standard product that people recommend, but now that a security vulnerability has been found, ZoneLabs only response is that people should upgrade to the paid-for version. They won’t fix the free version, because it would be too much trouble, and they don’t think the security hole is that big (basically begging hackers to exploit the hole). I can understand not adding new features to a free version, but leaving open a known exploit for a security product doesn’t seem too smart. It wouldn’t make me that comfortable using either version. If I were a competing company like Kerio (which also offers a similar free-for-home-use personal firewall), I’d be out there promoting how my solution was more secure than the market leader’s.


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Comments on “ZoneLabs Won't Fix Hole In Free Firewall”

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9 Comments
CHIA GARCIA says:

No Subject Given

Zone Alarm used to be a freeware product. Then they started messing with lite and full editions. I stopped using their products then. When I upgraded my zone alarm to find that half of the features in the free version were disabled. I was pissed! Why should I bother with a company that pulls this kind of crap???

Aaron Anderson (user link) says:

Is there some evidence that Kerio is not vulnerabl

Quote from the ExtremeTech article: “… since the vulnerability was tied to Windows, the vulnerability would also affect other firewall manufacturers and not just ZoneAlarm.”

I searched Kerio’s website for some mention of the ShellExecute vulnerabilty and they make no reference to it. Similarly a few simple Google searches yeilded no results.

I’m not sure if this problem warrants everybody picking on only ZoneAlarm just yet.

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