SoftPerfect Personal Firewall 1.4.1

[zatoicchi]

SoftPerfect Personal Firewall is a free network firewall designed to protect your PC against attacks from the Internet or via a local area network.

SoftPerfect Personal Firewall offers customizable security using user-defined rules for packet filtering. It works at a low level and also allows you to create rules based on non-IP protocols such as ARP.

SoftPerfect Personal Firewall supports multiple network adapter configurations. This allows you to apply a rule, for example, for just a modem connection or you could apply separate rules for each system interface.

With a flexible filtering system, trusted MAC address checking feature and separate network adapter configuration you can even use it on a router or a server.


Link
SoftPerfect Personal Firewall 1.4.1 (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Firewall/SoftPerfect-Personal-Firewall.shtml)

[anon]

Thanks, I will try it in my test Windows when I get home - I'm at school right now and despite having installed it as administrator (I know the password :cool2:), it needs a reboot to work. But this PC is running DeepFreeze, which means everything you install and create gets lost after a restart, including the files and registry keys that'd make the program work :frown:

I'll do a small review (will edit this post), since this looks very lightweight but feature-filled to be a firewall. Most ones out there are a bit bloated, specially Norton products :biggrin:

[anon]

Mini-review

I have installed it in my test Windows.
When it first runs after a reboot, you're greeted by this screen:

http://www.sb-innovation.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=3131

Where you can choose to create the default rules for the most common applications, some of which include:
http://www.sb-innovation.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=3130

This is its main window:


http://www.sb-innovation.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=3132

Very uncluttered and straightforward, which is good.


Load/Save Rules lets you save and (re)load your custom rules to/from a file. A very good option for when you're reinstalling Windows, or setting up the firewall in different computers. Most other FW programs let you do this too, but not as easily as with these buttons - most "import/export options" buttons are buried within their UIs, or the procedure itself involves copying its configuration file(s) or exporting its registry keys.
Preset Rules lets you (re)add rules from the program's default ruleset.
There are few things to do in the Settings window:

set an "access password", choose whether the firewall should load on Windows startup,
control logging and the log's maximum size,
toggle balloon-tip notifications on or off.

MAC Addresses lets you add, modify and import the list of MACs filtering won't apply to.
Learning Mode toggles that option on or off. You have to enable it for the firewall to ask whether to allow or block new connections, or else it will only allow those that comply with the chosen rules - everything else will be blocked. This can be a bit confusing for new users, but they've stated it wasn't designed for beginners:

Please be aware that the SoftPerfect Personal Firewall is not designed for novices and requires some networking knowledge from you for a correct configuration.

This is how a dialog asking you for permission to block or allow a new connection looks like:

http://www.sb-innovation.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=3133

Note it doesn't tell you which application from all the ones you have running has generated the connection, nor there's an option to show it - this is a big downside. I can't know whether it's Azureus, Faze, eMule, Ares or ICQ, among others, that's trying to connect somewhere.
You also can't add application (EXE) specific rules, another downside: I'd rather only let, say, uTorrent receive incoming connections in port 60000, rather than let port 60000 itself receive anything that's sent to it.

Web-Site launches your default Web browser to open SoftPerfect's home page (Software for local area networks, intranets and the Internet (http://www.softperfect.com)).
Help opens the program's readme.



Conclusion

The firewall itself follows the very basic principles of such security software: allow the user to control who network applications can contact, and protect the user from outside attacks. It achieves the former through asking whether a connection to remote host xx.xx.xx.xx, port xxxx should be allowed or blocked, and the latter by stealthing all ports for which rules haven't been created.
Of course some time has passed since it was created (2004), and the methods it uses to achieve both have some drawbacks - you can't know which application is trying to connect, so its connection attempt alerts wouldn't give me enough info, and modern network attacks can exploit the fact that application-specific rules can't be created (the ports they'd be using are always open...) to even completely bypass the firewall itself in some ocasions.
A great point in favor is its absolutely minimal resource usage: 0% CPU and 1.8MB of RAM at the time of this writing. I think by far none of the other personal firewalls out there can reach these very low figures while offering the same -or more- protection this one achieves.
But if it is by now pretty much unable to offer attack protection - which is mostly why you'd want a firewall - due to it's "allow/block ports and not programs" mechanism...
I give it a 5/10.

@zatoicchi: no offense man, I know you try to share only the best programs here :top: