20
e’ve had our share of
“uh-oh” moments, when
curiosity superseded our
better judgment and we
impulsively clicked a sus-
picious link or downloaded
a suspect fi le. In most
cases, those moments
have been followed by a laborious mal-
ware disinfection, or if the damage was
severe, a full-blown Windows reinstall.
Trustware Security promises to make
those situations a thing of the past. To
prove it’s serious, the company will pay
you $500 if BufferZone fails to keep your
PC secure, with a few caveats ( http://
tinyurl.com/2nvc23 ). Normally, we’d
worry that such lofty claims would result
in a Chapter 11 fi ling, but despite our
best efforts, we were unable to wreak
irreversible havoc on our test systems
and claim our bounty.
BufferZone works its wizardry by iso-
lating all web-based activities, including
email and IM software, at the application
level. Without BufferZone, application
write requests can alter critical system
fi les and make changes to the all-impor-
tant registry, allowing malware to muck up
a system. But with BufferZone installed,
applications stay sheathed in a virtualized
shell, and write requests are diverted to a
virtual folder. Programs think they’re writ-ing to the OS, but everything stays intact,
even when executing a dirty fi le. And
unlike traditional anti-spyware and anti-
virus applications, BufferZone doesn’t
rely on defi nition updates; it blockades
your system equally well against both
known and unknown threats. Rounding
out BufferZone’s list of tricks is the ability
to protect your system from harmful fi les
residing on removable media, such as
USB keys and optical discs.
What BufferZone won’t do is install on
Windows Vista; compatibility is limited to
XP with SP2. It’s true that Vista has yet to
gain traction among consumers, but we’d
expect an app that touts next-gen capa-
bilities to support the latest OS. Trustware
assures us this support is forthcoming.
After installing BufferZone, we trotted
indiscriminately through the web’s darker
recesses, visiting every unsavory website
we could fi nd. Along the way, we installed
toolbars, agreed to suspicious ActiveX
requests, and downloaded infected fi les
that would normally spell disaster. But no
matter how badly we tried to muddle oursystem, damage stayed contained within
BufferZone’s virtual folder. Emptying
the buffer was like waking up from a
bad dream—all our nasty downloads
disappeared, along with any changes
they made to our browser. That means
legitimate changes, such as toolbars and
add-ons, disappeared too, as it’s an all or
nothing proposition with BufferZone; once
you click, there’s no going back—and
no last minute warnings, either. To save
downloads you trust, you can right-click
and move them out of the buffer prior to
emptying it.
We didn’t notice a performance hit
when using BufferZone, save for a short
delay the fi rst time we opened a program
and BufferZone ran an optimization rou-
tine on it. And if true to its word, Trustware
will have full Vista support by the time you
read this.Trustware BufferZone Pro
A one-click salve for Internet-induced infections
By configuring removable media and
network paths to open in a virtualized
shell, you’ll keep your PC protected from
every angle.Tired of relatives asking you for free tech support? Install BufferZone on their PCs
and schedule it to periodically and automatically undo Internet-based changes.
Finally, you can stop screening your phone calls!APPROVED $30/YEAR
http://www.trustware.com/index.html0 MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC | $# 08 | http://www.maximumpc.comwww.maximumpc.com
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