Norman Personal
Firewall has the following features...
Connection security: The
Norman Personal Firewall will monitor every application that attempts
a connection to the IntemeUnetwork closely. Each application will be
automatically assigned its own "guard" for monitoring. Applications
that do not use the InterneUnetwork are free from any kind of monitoring.
No longer will you connect to the Interne and have to worry that some
applications in your system will send out information without your
knowledge.
Trojans that seek to control your
system from an incoming connection will be detected, as well as scripts
that attempt to send emails using your name. You can control which
peers who can view and access your shared folders and even prevent
others from detecting your computer's presence on the network.
Collection of Behavioral Pattern: While
you surf, snippets of information are being sent out between your browser
and the web sites you visit. These "cookies" are useful for the sites
to differentiate between surfers, but could also be collected and used
to provide information about your surfing habits. Surfing information
such as "referrer" (the web page you came from) can also be blocked.
Active Content Nuisance: Active-Xs,
JavaNB Scripts and Java Applets are supposed to enrich the Internet
experience for users. However, malicious versions of such can cause
serious security breaches. NPF gives you total control over which sites
that can activate these codes on your PC, and which sites that should
be stopped. With NPF installed, these threats are history .
Parental Control Web Browsing: This
feature gives the "parents" a possibility to set up user accounts with
different access rights to web sites. Scenario: Mary that is 4 years
old can only surf these sites (www.disney.com, www.norman.com etc.)
John can surf all sites except those containing any pornographic material.
The banned sites are blocked by url address, words in the url address,
content on sites (words in the banned word list matching words found
on sites. Parents can edit this banned word list. They can e.g. enterwords
containing things they do not want "John" to see.
Time Control and Account Manager: Parents
are able to define one or more accounts with user passwords. Each account
can be given a total time (may differ for each account) pr. day/week/month
and/or special hours during the day..... Scenario: John may only access
the Internet between 16:00 and 21 :00 and a total of five hours a week.
Mary can also use the Internet for five hours a week, but must do it
between 13:00 and 18:00.
Check summing of all executables -
(applications) that are stored in the rules database (except for the
system itself). This way NPF will detect a possible trojan trying to
pretend that it is a well-known Internet application..... Scenario:
Somebody installed a backdoor trojan with the file name of IEXPLORER.EXE
on your PC. This happens to be the same file name as Microsoft's Internet
Explorer. NPF would most likely already have rules for this executable
allowing it to access sites using the http, https and ftp protocols.
Since NPF, as it is today, can't see that this is a different file
by checking its content, it would allow the trojan to access the Internet.
The user should of course have the possibility to update the checksum
if NPF detects a miss match. This will only be accepted if the user
acknowledges that the system has been updated with a patch, a service
pack or a new version .
