ust surfi ng the Internet can be
enough to infect your system and
grant malware uninvited access
to your hard drive. But what
about the malware that is invited?
Malware writers know that the
quickest way to infi ltrate a sys-
tem is through the end user, and
there’s no shortage of dirty code
masquerading under the guise of helpful
applications. By the time you realize you’ve
been duped, it’s too late, and it’s here that
ForceField ultimately falls short.
Like BufferZone, ForceField protects at
the application level, enveloping your web
browser in an emulation layer. You’ll know
ForceField’s working by the green border
glowing around your browser. As you surf
the web, unsolicited downloads write to a
virtual fi le system, which prevents rogue
sites from thrashing the OS. As a second
layer of protection, ForceField issues a
warning whenever you’re about to enter a
site known to distribute spyware, at which
point you can enter anyway or hightail it to
safer corners of the web.
But unlike BufferZone, this one-
two punch falls far short of providing
an impenetrable defense. ForceField
focuses only on web browsing, leaving
email, IM clients, and other connected
applications exposed to the same dan-
gers. And while ForceField neutralizesunsolicited downloads occurring behind
the scenes, it won’t save your system if
you accidentally execute a malicious fi le
or willingly install a seemingly innocent
application only to fi nd out later it was
laced with spyware.
ForceField was still in beta form dur-
ing our tests, and we uncovered a few
rough edges. Despite support for both
Internet Explorer and Firefox, we ini-
tially couldn’t get either browser to load
through Vista’s start menu; instead, we
had to right-click the ForceField icon in
the taskbar. Several reboots later the
problem disappeared. XP wasn’t affected,
but some applications managed to load
unprotected browser windows in both
OSes, exposing a major vulnerability.
When we navigated the same shady
websites we surfed with BufferZone,
ForceField identifi ed only some of them as
potentially harmful, letting several othersslip through undetected. You have to wait
while downloaded fi les undergo a scan for
known malware, and we had little success
getting ForceField to fl ag fi les embedded
with Trojans and other common cruft.
False positives were much less of an issue,
but that’s little consolation given the weak
detection of real threats.
By limiting virtualization to just automatic
downloads made through the browser,
ZoneAlarm also limits the product’s appeal.
In its current form, ForceField can’t be
counted on to provide a reliable defense.
And even though ForceField isn’t intended
as a stand-alone security application, there’s
not enough to it to justify a $30 investment.20
ZoneAlarm ForceField
Protects you from threats on the web, but not from yourself
A major security flaw allows pop-ups to
open outside of ForceField’s virtualiza-
tion shell, giving malware an open door
to your system.Select the Private Browser to cover your tracks and ForceField will block cookies, pre-
vent pages from being added to the history, and erase auto-fill and completion entries.APPROVED $
http://zonealarm.comMAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC | $# 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
$20 EACH ADDI-
TIONAL YEARSecurity
Internet
APPROVED
NOT