Lists of freeware firewalls

Firewalls

Screenshots
Selection of personal firewall snapshots:
(Click to enlarge)

Comodo Firewall Pro

Jetico Personal Firewall V1.0

Kerio Personal Firewall 2.15

Safety.Net

Sunbelt Kerio 4 Firewall

Sygate Personal Firewall

ZoneAlarm Firewall Free Version

Windows XP SP 2 users already have a built in firewall. However it is limited to only inbound filtering. For non-security purposes, many users prefer to use a personal firewall to control outbound connections as well. In recent years, many of the freeware firewalls were either abandoned (Kerio 2) or companies that produced them were sold (Sygate) and many of the freeware offering are very old outdated products (Outpost Free). Comodo Firewall however bucks this trend. Vista users have the option of just relying on their builtin firewall because it includes outbound filtering , though this is turned off by default.

Many personal firewalls, have moved towards incorporating HIPS features because this is the only way to defeat leak tests. Another option is to combine a solid basic personal firewall with a strong freeware HIPS.

Popular

1. Comodo Firewall Pro - http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/
2. Comodo Firewall Pro 3.0 (beta) - http://download.comodo.com/cpf/download/setups/beta/CFP_Setup_3.0.7.208_XP_Vista_x32_BETA.exe
3. Jetico Personal Firewall V1.0 (no longer in development) - http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/jpfirewall.htm
4. Kerio Personal Firewall 2.15 (no longer in development) - http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page7.html#Kerio%20Personal%20Firewall
5. Sunbelt Kerio 4 Firewall - http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Home-Home-Office/Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall/Download/
6. Sygate Personal Firewall (no longer in development) - http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3356.html
7. Outpost Firewall Free (no longer in development) - http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpostfree/download.php
8. ZoneAlarm Firewall Free Version - http://www.zonelabs.com alternative download

ZoneAlarm is perhaps THE personal firewall that started the trend of using personal firewalls among home users and it is still very popular. It is also currently (July 2007) one of the few freeware firewalls to support Vista. Comodo Firewall Pro is the latest breed of firewall that is designed with defeating leaktests, it is currently (July 2007), the top personal firewall (free and paid) in beating leak tests (opinions differ on how important this is though), although at the cost of being resource heavy and complicated to use. Kerio Personal Firewall 2.15 though no longer developed is a old fan favorite, as it is light weight, stable and has a highly intuitive yet flexible interface. However given it's age it does not handle leak tests very well. Sunbelt Kerio 4 firewall provides some HIPS capabilities with results in better resistant to leak test. However it has a reputable of being buggy, slow and being not user friendly.

Sygate Personal Firewall was a popular firewall however it was bought over. Outpost free is probably the most outdated of the bunch here. Jetico Personal Firewall V1.0 was a first attempt by Jetico to produce a firewall. Besides Comodo it has the best performance for a freeware firewall against leak tests. However it has several quirks, such as not being installed as a service, and a very unconventional interface for firewall rulesets. They have since moved onto version 2 (not free).

Others

1. Adorons Firewall - http://www.adorons.com/adorons-firewall.php (down? June 07)
2. AirSnare - http://home.comcast.net/~jay.deboer/airsnare/
3. Ashampoo FireWall - http://www.ashampoo.com/frontend/products/php/product.php?session_langid=2&idstring=0050
4. AS3 Personal Firewall 2 - http://www.download.com/AS3-Personal-Firewall/3000-10435_4-10610950.html
5. Bartware Personal firewall - http://www.askfiles.com/Internet/Security/BartWare-Personal-Firewall.html
6. Blink Neighborhood Watch - http://www.eeye.com/html/products/blink/neighborhoodwatch/index.html align=center Replaced with Blink Personal -free for one year (after which antiVirus functions stop)
7. CHX-I Packet Filter -http://www.idrci.net/chx3.0.msi - manual (down? June 07).
8. Eagle X is an IDS environment using free software - http://www.engagesecurity.com/products/eaglex/
9. Filseclab Personal Firewall - http://www.filseclab.com/eng/products/firewall.htm
10. Firewall Builder - http://www.fwbuilder.org/
11. GhostWall - http://www.ghostsecurity.com/ghostwall/
12. GoldTach personal firewall - http://www.goldtach.com/firewall-download/firewall-download.htm
13. Huricanesoft Personal Firewall - http://www.hurricane-soft.com/Products/ - Pro version is available free for none-commercial usage.
14. Look n Stop Lite - http://www.snapfiles.com/get/looknstop.html
15. McAfee® Internet Security Suite – Special edition from AOL http://safety.aol.com/isc/BasicSecurity/
16. Netdefender - http://www.programmerworld.net/personal/firewall.htm
17. OpenFirewall (open source)- www.giesa.altervista.org/openfirewall/
18. PC Tools Firewall Plus - http://www.pctools.com/firewall/
19. PeerGuardian (open source) - http://sourceforge.net/projects/peerguardian
20. Proxy+ - http://www.proxy plus.cz/features.php?lang=en
21. Primedius Firewall Lite - http://www.majorgeeks.com/Primedius_Firewall_Lite_d4146.html
22. R-Firewall - http://www.r-firewall.com/
23. SafeZone - http://www.minutegroup.com/prodpg_safezone.htm
24. Safety.Net - http://www.netveda.com/downloads/index.htm
25. Securepoint Personal Firewall & VPN Client 3.7.1 - http://www.majorgeeks.com/Securepoint_Personal_Firewall_&_VPN_Client_d4273.html
26. SoftPerfect Personal Firewall - http://www.softperfect.com/products/firewall/
27. Sphinx A wall - http://www.sphinx-soft.com/firewall/order.html
28. Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0 (outdated) - http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=tpfirewall
29. # Vista Firewall Control - http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/order.html
30. WyvernWorks Firewall - http://www.majorgeeks.com/WyvernWorks_Firewall_2004_d3429.html
31. Xanv personal firewall - http://www.xanv.com/
32. Xeon Personal Firewall - http://www.econceptsoftware.com/xeon.html (Ad supported)
33. See also Lists of freeware Behavior blockers some like SensiveGuard, Winpooch, DSA,Prevx etc that have network control functions

Some interesting ones worth trying are Safety.Net,Personal Firewall, SoftPerfect Personal Firewall and PC Tools Firewall Plus - one of the few free personal firewalls that currently(July 07) work in Vista. Another option is Vista Firewall Control, it is a tool to manage the built-in vista firewall.

IP filters

1. PeerGuardian 2 - http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/
2. Protowall - http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?autocom=faq&CODE=02&qid=31

These are mostly used for filtering out ip address. See here for [| more blocklists]

Addons for firewalls

For Outpost 1

1. Blockpost - http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3394
2. HTTP Log - http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4686
3. Super Stealth - ARP filtering plug-in - http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3037

For XP windows firewall

1. FireLogXP - http://www.majorgeeks.com/FireLogXP_d4035.html
2. FirePanel XP - http://www.router19.org/Software.aspx
3. XPFiremon - http://www.shadowlair.com/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,27/Itemid,37/
4. XP Logger - http://www.majorgeeks.com/XP_Logger_d3307.html
5. Windows 2000 Firewalling - http://homepages.wmich.edu/~mchugha/w2kfirewall.htm

For Zone alarm

1. VisualZone - http://visualize.phenominet.com/

Block lists for Kerio firewall 2

1. Sponge - http://web.archive.org/20041217094741/www.geocities.com/yosponge/updates.html
2. KPF Splash Screen Killer - http://www.brightnova.com/downloads/KPFSplashKiller.exe

For sygate firewall

1. SPF Log Viewer - http://www.geocities.jp/bruce_teller/sygate5/spflgvw_en.htm

Information Sources

1. Matousec's Introduction to firewall leak testing - http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/introduction-firewall-leak-testing.php and http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/

1. Firewall leak tester - http://www.firewallleaktester.com/index.html

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This article is part of the Lists of Freeware Security Software: Malware Control series.

Freeware Anti-Viruses | Freeware Anti-Spyware | Freeware Anti-Trojans | Freeware Anti-Keyloggers | Freeware Anti-Rootkits | Freeware Firewalls | Freeware Behavior blockers | Freeware Sandboxes | Freeware Virtualization | Freeware Security analysis tools | Freeware Hardening tools | Freeware Blocklists | Freeware security services (excluding virus scanners) | Freeware Anti-Phishing | List of portable tools | List of unclassified tools Related : Lists of online scanners