There are several different products, and we'll give you a list of the more common ones, but at the moment there is really only ONE software firewall that is worth a hoot...keep on reading to see what it is.

First off, we're talking about 'personal' firewalls here, as *most* simracing drivers are not going to have a copy of Checkpoint Firewall 1 laying around to load on a UNIX box. We're also going to discuss setting up a Linux box as a firewall, as there are a few people that are doing that. Here's a list of many of the firewalls out there, but we're not going to discuss using these at the moment. If you purchased one of these, stand by for updates, because there is a reason why that they are rather useless at the moment. Symantec's AtGuard, Sygate's Personal Firewall, BlackICE Defender, Conseal PC Firewall, and Lockdown 2000 are the 'other' ones that we're going to discuss...very quickly. The reason why? They offer NO protection from Trojan horse activity. Let's see how this works (and take note, hardware firewall users, you may ALSO be unprotected from interior attempts to access outside resources)!

The Trojan Horse Several people have mentioned to me that Trojans are such will be caught by their virus software, so why worry about a firewall (especially if they are already running a hardware firewall)? Here's the reason. For one, if you are one of the very FEW people that get your update weekly from Symantec or McAfee, you still are behind the Trojan power curve. There are probably at least 1 new or modified Trojan being released every week. This is a complete guess-timate, but I see how often some sites are updated, and figure that some kids are working on a few variants that are not getting posted. The only time that Symantec or McAfee can release a fix for a Trojan is when one is discovered, dismantled, and then a new definition written for it. So, you could get a 'fix' for a Trojan days, weeks, even MONTHS after the original version was written.

Many of the cheaper hardware firewalls do a superb job blocking exterior traffic from getting in...but do NOTHING about traffic going out. So you could assume that you're perfectly safe, with your 4 port hub/firewall and your latest copy of Norton Antivirus...but there's a hole there you could drive Dale Earnhardt's car transporter out of...

ZoneAlarm There is only ONE personal firewall at the moment that will block Trojans, in fact, I've got personal experiences of that happening. That is ZoneAlarm (any version, including the free one) from ZoneLabs. It blocks EVERYTHING that attempts to access the computers, from inside or outside, until you say that that program is allowed to connect. It then creates an encrypted signature for the program, so that no Trojan could attempt to 'fool' the firewall into thinking that it was the original program.

As the personal experience that I had mentioned, I had just reloaded my machine from scratch, but had done some emailing, software downloads, ect. Now, I had many of the programs operational (including ZoneAlarm) but didn't have my virus software running yet, as I wanted to download the latest updates for it. Zone alarm sent me a message that "Win32vxd.exe" was attempting to access the internet. Immediately suspicious (a good knowledge of your system helps quite a bit in these circumstances) I hit the "DENY" button. A little bit of hex-editing just about confirmed my suspicions, and then the final confirmation came when I loaded the virus software. Now had I gotten my virus software up first, it would have found it...but what if it had been a new Trojan release? It could have been sending info about my system for WEEKS before I would have realized it.

Setting up Racing Sims with ZoneAlarm At any rate, there IS one small problem with both ZoneAlarm free version as well as the full version. When running some of our multiplayer sims, many times the sim will lock up, or it will cause ZoneAlarm to blow up. Part of the reason is that the sims seem to have a real problem if they are not given IMMEDIATE access to the outside world...when running Zone Alarm before, I've had to CTRL-ALT-DEL the machine to get out of the locked-up mode. We spoke to the techs at Zone Alarm about this problem, and here's what they said.

If you are running the full (pay for) version of ZoneAlarm, you can 'pre-register' the application to work with ZA. What you do is open it up, click on the 'programs' menu, then use a Windows Explorer window to drag-and-drop your application (such as NASCAR 3) onto the menu. It's now pre-registered, and you just have to then change it's properties to give it full access (and server access) to the internet.

If you are running the free version of ZoneAlarm, it's a bit more difficult. First you have to start your racing game, and attempt to access the internet. If you are using Glide or hardware rendering for your racing sim, you may want to change to software momentarily so that you can ALT-TAB between items that are running. When to attempt to connect to multiplayer, then ALT-TAB to the ZoneAlarm window that has popped-up, and tell it "yes". You may still lock up the game, but hopefully you will have registered it with ZoneAlarm. If you COMPLETELY blow up ZoneAlarm, where it dumps all the programs that are registered, here's how to fix it. Shut down ZoneAlarm, then go to C:\WINDOWS\Internet Logs and delete all the files in that directory, then restart ZoneAlarm. You will have to reregister applications, so you may want to try to get the racing sim registered first.

If you are interested in some of the online tests of software firewalls, check out LeakTest, and you can test your OWN firewall out. As well, don't fret, users of other firewalls, most of them have promised patches to cure the problems with interior access as soon as possible.