BlackICE Defender - Is This Thing On?
Written: Oct 21 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to use
Cons: Doesn't work half the time, a minor security hazard
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| awoolcott's Full Review: Macmillan BlackICE Defender (1575954451) for PC |
BlackICE Defender is the latest adventure in my shamelessly obsessive habit of downloading anything and everything I can get my hands on, that is free or trial. I just can’t turn down a FREE, 30-day trial of the fully functioning firewall product from Network Ice. Good thing it’s a free trial, because this piece of software highly disappointed me. Definitely, it’s easy to use and self-configuring, but when you can’t rely on it to actually do its job, we’ve got a problem. If you’ve got a dial-up (I can’t talk DSL or Cable because I don’t have those services, due to the incompetence of US West/Qwest/Whatever), I would recommend ZoneAlarm. It’s free and actually protects against dial-up 100% of the time.
Firewall? - In fire terms a firewall is a type of wall that protects a room from having a fire spread to it. In computer geeky terms a firewall stops packets of information from being transmitted to your computer. In English, it stops stuff from breaking in, potentially opening up a serious computer security hazard. These small software products are a must for always-on connections like DSL and Cable..it’s easy to get a lock on an IP because it’s static instead of dynamic. For dial-up’s it’s not essential, but I would still have one on for precautionary reasons. I’d rather be safe than sorry.
So, what about this BlackICE? - BlackICE Defender is an interesting beast. It’s easy to get up and running. If you get the download trial it’s about a 2MB download in ZIP archive format, so you’ll need a ZIP unzipper in order to install. After that it’s not too hard to install and the like. It just rests in your system tray like a good boy and waits for the bad boy hackers to start messing with you. But the little blue eye is freaky…
Unlike most firewall products, BlackICE doesn’t ask for permission to allow online-powered products to access the internet (i.e IE..hehe). Everything is cool with them, just as long as they don’t try to do funny stuff. This makes it good for new users, who might get confused by the alerts (from experience – I got a call from my mother asking me what to do when ZoneAlarm asked for permission to allow Internet Explorer to access the Internet). It’s also good for experienced users because it take that hassle of approving access from programs. It’s something that should be implemented in all firewalls. Too bad it’s probably the best feature.
There are four cut and dried levels of security – Trusting, Cautious, Nervous, and Paranoid. Each level of security allows different things – trusting allows all inbound traffic, while paranoid BLOCKS all inbound traffic. Again, very easy to manage and understand.
When an attack happens, the evil blue eye starts changing colors to the evil yellow eye and starts flashing. Clicking on it will tell you the attack pattern, the IP address, and a few short words on what they tried to do to you. It can also give you the DNS address as well (Domain Name Service, a way of mapping IP addresses to Domain names in computer networking lingo)for most attacks. A chart can even tell you different patterns of attacks – you can see network traffic going in and out, and attacks. That way if you detect an attack pattern by time this will help you out. An added neat feature is the ability to trace the IP and DNS and report it to Network Ice – cool!
There are plenty of advanced features as well, such as a list of trusted IP addresses that you don’t want BlackICE to block (say, your other computers in a home network, or in a business network). There is even some really geeky stuff like DNS lookup and NetBIOS node tracing as well –some down and dirty stuff for advanced users. That is one good thing about BlackICE, it can be used by novices and experts too.
Okay you idiot, why is this so bad? - I know it sounds good thus far but I’m just getting started!
First thing I did (as I always do with a new firewall) is go to ShieldsUp! and run the tests there. All went well, it tracked the attacks and all was well. Until they missed the IDENT port. It didn’t hide it in stealth mode; it just had it closed. ZoneAlarm placed the IDENT port into stealth, why not BlackICE? So there was still a minor security hazard. At least it worked right?
So again that day I tried to run ShieldsUp!, after I had rebooted my computer for the day. I logged in, waited for it to start, then waited for BlackICE to start logging alerts. Good thing I stopped looking, or I might still be there today. You see, it didn’t even notice the attacks. What made it even stranger was it had the IDENT port stealthed this time. And I did have ZoneAlarm disconnected if you are wondering. I didn’t make any sense. Why is it stealth now, yet before when it alerted me of attacks, it didn’t stealth the IDENT port?
So I restarted my connection, and noticed the evil blue eye had a quick case of red-eye, in the form of a slash across the icon. So I went to the readme and it said that the slash meant that BlackICE would not function if the BlackICE GUI wasn’t loaded completely. Since I didn’t believe that I uninstalled it. I reinstalled it a week later, and ran it again. Like the first installation of it, it tracked attacks and again didn’t stealth the IDENT port. And once again, after disconnecting, then reconnecting, I got the same results. Again, I uninstalled it.
I finally this last week reinstalled it a third time. After all, why not finish the 30-day trial? What I found was different – it only tracked attacks and the sort every other connection or so. Once it would track alerts fine, other times it didn’t do anything. In other words, BlackICE is erratic when it comes to dial-up connections apparently. I found this to be terribly disturbing, because when dealing with a product as important as a firewall, it just can’t be as erratic as BlackICE is.
Basically, if you are using a dial-up connection, this won’t work well. It probably would work much better for DSL and Cable, but like I said I don’t have either of these options so BlackICE isn’t a good choice.
Overall - I’m disappointed. For a program that Network Ice charges $40 dollars for, I demand “set it and forget it” security. What I get is an erratic dial-up firewall that can’t be counted on to do its job 100% of the time. That is unacceptable in my book. ZoneAlarm, despite its occasional confusing interface and consistent bugging for allowing programs to access the net, is a much better choice. Plus it’s free. Pay $40 for ZoneAlarm (if I had to)? Yes. Pay for BlackICE Defender? Not a chance. Sure its features impress me, but they aren’t worth the hassles of a program that half the time doesn’t work. Sorry.
Recommended:
No
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awoolcott
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Location: Arizona
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