RSSFew hours remaining in ZoneAlarm ForceField one-day giveaway
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 12, 2008, 5:44 PM
You have until 3:00 am EDT 9:00 am EDT Wednesday morning, August 13, to download ZoneAlarm's ForceField browser virtualization envelope and receive a license key good for a one-year subscription to the product on one PC.
The basic premise of ForceField is to build a kind of virtualization envelope around the active Web browser, where essentially anything to which a browser would normally connect is divided from the operating system by one layer of abstraction. When a malicious tool tries to leverage a security hole in some other product by way of communicating with the browser -- as was the case with last year's exploit of Apple QuickTime, which relied on Mozilla Firefox -- it won't find that hole because it doesn't appear to exist within the abstraction layer.
"ZoneAlarm ForceField diverts all automatic reading and writing attempts as you surf the Web," writes parent company CheckPoint Systems general manager Laura Yecies in a blog post today, "to an emulated, or 'pretend' part of the operating system, isolating your 'real' operating system from automatic drive-by-downloads and Web-based malware. It's essentially a reverse-trick."
As it turns out, ZoneAlarm wasn't the first to try this idea. In the fall of 2006, a company called GreenBorder unveiled what was believed at the time to be the first browser-specific virtualization envelope -- in that case, for Firefox. But Google acquired the entire project in May 2007, and has since done nothing with it. At last check, the former company's Web site was on automatic pilot, taking customer support messages from users of its prior products. CheckPoint later unveiled ForceField in September 2007.
ForceField is also a component of the most recent beta of ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, which also includes the original ZoneAlarm firewall and CheckPoint's consumer-grade anti-virus product. Fair warning: Not all of our FileForum reviewers found ForceField particularly impressive.
As reviewer darthbeads wrote last June, "This coding disaster that is ForceField is beyond awful. All of the browsers on my system (IE7, Masthon, Firefox, Opera) literally drag to a crawl that would make a drunk, one-legged, obese turtle look downright meteoric."
It may be supreme protection for your browser, or it may resemble an inebriated, quadriplegic reptile. For free -- at least for the first year -- it may be worth finding out for yourself.
OK.....got it...
But after so many repeated hassles with Zone Alarm hosing so many functions without there being a workaround to the problems...does one dare install it??????
And some question whether ZA has issues with many common services? LOL!
What's even more fun is to deal with their euphemistically labeled 'tech support' that gives Symantec a run for its money!
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Any extra layer of security is welcome by me. :)
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Your article states the free offer expires at 3 AM EDT Wednesday. This is incorrect. The offer began at 6 AM Pacific this morning and continues for a 24 hour period to expire at 6 AM Pacific tomorrow (Wednesday) or 9 AM EDT.
Rick Savoia
The Force Field podcast for IT service professionals
www.theforcefield.net
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You're quite right, rsavoia, and thanks for pointing it out. We've made the correction above.
-SF3
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I wouldn't use ZoneAlarm even if it is free. CRAP.
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Perhaps you have some thoughts on why it is crap? Just to say a program is crap doesn't justify it being crap.
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Believe me, its crap. It was once an ok program, but slowly it turned to crap.
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I agree with the comments about ZoneAlarm. Check out Matousec and see how "well" the ZA firewall did versus others.
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If enough people say it's crap, it's crap ;) P.S. It's so bloated and such an intrusion to actually getting work done.
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Well, I will add my two cents in on this. ZoneAlarm is hacked so easy that it is a moot point in even using it. Reason #1 that is it crap. Reason #2 is as simple as every freeware firewall works better and is not so bloated at ZoneLabs crapware. Do we really need to list more reason?
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I care. Free stuff is WAY cool! :)
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Who cares?
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It doesn't work on Vista 64-bit.
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What is your point? I'm switching from windows and I'm not on 64 bit (yet).
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Is it actually needed? I thought Vista x64's IE ran in "protected mode" so nothing could get out anyway.
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