nything you can do I can do bet-
ter.” We suspect PC Tools has
a motivational poster bearing
this catchphrase in its board
room, because it appears to
be the philosophy behind
its ThreatFire security app.
Just like AntiBot, ThreatFire
uses a heuristic scanning
engine to unearth malicious malware
before it has a chance to grapple with
the OS. But the similarities end there,
which is a good thing.
ThreatFire picks up the installation
routine where AntiBot leaves off, and
rather than throw a few arbitrary options
at the end user, the app gives you cus-
tomizable control over additional subsets
of the application. If you’d rather not tin-
ker, the default options will keep the set-
it-and-forget-it folks protected, but power
users will want to poke around the menus
and tailor ThreatFire in ways AntiBot
doesn’t allow, such as enabling automatic
restore points before quarantining fi les.
You can also schedule rootkit scanning
at set intervals, just as you would with
your anti-virus software. But we’re most
enamored with the Advanced Rule menu,
where you can set up custom security
rules for virtually any kind of threat. If you
want to create a rule that disallows anyprocess from deleting or overwriting fi les
in the Windows/System32 folder, you
can do that and then confi gure excep-
tions for programs or processes that
might legitimately need those types of
privileges. Give your custom rule a name
and description, and you can enable or
disable it thereafter with a click of the
mouse. And to add icing to an already
tasty cake, ThreatFire’s wizard walks you
through the process in plain English, so
you never feel overwhelmed or unsure
about what you’re doing. Bravo!
Like AntiBot, ThreatFire runs quietly
in the background, making its presence
known only when it detects a threat.
Pop-up windows are color-coded based
on their severity, with red indicating an
automatic eradication based on known
malware and yellow signifying suspicious
activity fl agged by the heuristic engine. If
you’re unsure of what to do, a hyperlink
brings up a Google search of the offend-ing fi le. Gray windows round out the
color scheme and represent a potentially
unwanted application (PUA). These pro-
cesses share similar traits to spyware but
may be required to run depending on the
program they come bundled with. These
too carry Google links, but this is one area
in which we prefer AntiBot’s more detailed
rundown, which tells us exactly what the
fi le is trying to do.
Romping recklessly through the net,
just as we did before, ThreatFire caught
more threats than AntiBot did, preventing
the same malware from altering our hosts
fi le or killing IE’s Internet Options tabs.
And did we mention ThreatFire’s free?
Combined with the advanced options, it’s
a clear winner.Color codes indicate the type and sever-
ity of attack. In this case, the yellow
box warns that the screensaver we just
downloaded might be up to no good.Custom rules make it possible to thwart brand-new worms even before signature up-
dates are made available, and the setup wizard will hold your hand from start to finish.APPROVED FREE
http://www.threatfi re.comMAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC | FEB 08 | http://www.maximumpc.comwww.maximumpc.com
20
PC Tools ThreatFire
Better than the competition—and free!
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