FIREWALL

[waregim]

I rarely use firewalls, or even AV on Win.

But I am going to be adding a bunch of nasty Adobe apps, and the like for video editiing (totally new to me).

I figure a firewall is in order.

I installed Glasswire, which I had heard nothing but raves about. It is crap. A bitch even to turn on right, and doesnt seem to want to block anything starting, but can block stuff once its already screwing up your system. Yucking fuseless.

I have used Private Firelwall and Comodo in the past. Hate the new Comodo, and would take me forever to find the old version, which might not work on 64 bit.
Private Firewall is good, but not quite up to snuff. Redirecting internet connections is possible, but exceedingly tedious.

I am looking for something that makes *CLEAR* distinctions between running, and connecting to the network.
And allows me to block either at start, temporarily or until told to UNBLOCK. I had an old firewall that was great for blocking, but wouldnt let me unblock it (or at least be obvious on how to do it). Needless to say it went to /dev/null.

But most of all it shoult NOT rely on Win services. I have most of those shut down, and Glasswire wants some up that I want down. In other words, nothing that hooks to Win Firewall.

It should also have a small memory footprint. Dont care for it to ,analyse traffic. Just block what its told to.

Any ideas?

[RodneyYouPlonker]

Whatever it is you're trying to do, that is not the way I would go about it at all.  You have a strange approach to Windows, sounds like you've been at Linux for too long...

So you say about all this blocking with a firewall.  Is that all really necessary?  Just use the Hosts file to block the sites that you don't want it to connect to.

There is nothing nasty about any of the adobe programs they are all very good IMO.  It sounds like you're wanting to do some kind of Zone Alarm situation, I've always stayed well clear of that program used it many many years ago thought it was a bunch of crap IMO.

Just edit the hosts file, it's that simple really, block any sites you don't want any of the Adobe programs to connect to.

If you don't run a decent AV program in Windows then really it's Windows suicide..  If that's your thing then fair enough, you can't expect it to be the same as Linux cos as everybody knows it's Windows that is the main target nobody in the malicious world even gives a damn about Linux or any of the others.

I'm not sure really what to say to you, just do it how you want dude.  No doubt you will take no notice of what I say anyway, like most people in this forum do (surprise, surprise).

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I have a whole bunch of Adobe stuff installed, I've used Audition many times it's an amazing program and it's very important to me sometimes when I'm working on Movies it's essential.

I have the Master Suite running, it seems to work really well for me.  I'm not sure where I downloaded it now it was ages ago, probably from Demonoid when that site was actually decent.

I have these entries in my Windows 10 Hosts file:

127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 lmlicenses.wip4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 lm.licenses.adobe.com


As far as I'm aware it stops the program from uncracking itself. and also I think really best to make sure you disable any updates as that's not a good idea.  Maybe there are more entries you can find if you look around the net.

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There was a time, a while ago, I'm not sure now where it reached the point about TPB that they had started to block it from normal internet access in my country.  The solution was really to get a VPN in the end because it was just a lot easier and much less hassle.  At one point I remember using the Hosts file to block some certain sites that they were using to prevent access to TPB site and it did work but was just a lot of messing around.  I can't really now exactly remember what I did as it was a few years ago.  Handy really though.  I think for anything really like in this situation you're wanting to block Adobe.  Well I don't blame you cos if you don't then there'd be all kinds of problems.

I think though that actually using a VPN is a good method for protecting yourself due to the fact that you're using an encrypted connection so being hacked so to speak is virtually impossible anyway so really the idea of having a firewall to protect for that reason seems pretty pointless to me.  If all you want to do is protect your Adobe programs from communications to the servers that they use then the Hosts file is the simple and easy way.  You'd still have to block all these using a Firewall program anyway you'd need to know what connections it was using.  Believe me when I say the Windows Firewall these days is pretty crap, it is, it's not very good to use.  If you're VPNing then what does it matter just as long as you're using a VPN while doing all your pirate activity, if you're going on legit sites then it's okay as normal.

I cannot live without a VPN at present time, it's is an absolute necessity.  All I'm bothered about is that Windows doesn't uncrack my programs because I might need them soon.  Whether photoshop or Audition or whatever I find these are the best tools when you're sorting your stuff out Photoshop has a real classic design about it, used all over the world for Picture manipulation, it is the standard in that field, they have a good choice of stuff really if you just wouldn't hate on these things so much?

[RobertX]

Why not just use Gimp? It's for Windows.

And what about Vegas Pro? I know you have to activate it, but I think you can use Youtube for videos on how you can do it.

[waregim]

I have an enormous HOSTS file (on Win and Linux) and try to add the IP of anything that phones home (even freeware) . And I'm nearly always on the VPN.

M$ routinely avoids the Hosts file, apparently by using its own VPN. I shut down its protocols so I *believe* its blocking telemetry. I use OpenVPN with my VPN provider (on Win and Linux) which provides it own protocols. I have IPV6 shut down on both systems, yet on *my* VPN I can still connect to clearly blocked M$ sites on HTTP and HTTPS.

Adobe is clearly invasive. I can see it running in my processes. Multiple services that serve no useful purpose since I can shut them down - and move their executables with no effect on the operation of the programs, except for a complaint about a missing process, which will be ignored with a hacked amtlib.dll found in most releases.

The lil lady needs the Adobe crap for classes. I test it on my machines first. In order to install Indesign 2019 tonight I had to shut down thhe Cloud services while they were running to get it to install, at least on Win7 here. (It might have wanted Win10, as most of the newer Adobe crap seems to want). It reinstalled the missing executables, and as soon as I am done installing junk, I will go and remove them again.

In fairness, Gimp is and will never really be a real replacement for Photoshop. And that is with it fully loaded with plugins. It will handle 90% of most operations, like a VW will handle most of the processes as well as a Ferrari on the road. But when that other 10% is needed, its really nice to have.
Needelss to say, our car is an ancient diesel held together with duct tape and cable ties. Really.

The first thing I do with any Win install is to hack the crap out of it. Shut down any bloody service not absitively needed, and then go into their cron/tasks service and pretty much eviscerate it (I do likewise in systemd in Linux). As a result most boogers are a temprorary annoyance since their RATs dont work and they are easily spotted and flushed out without any AV software. Double booting comes in awful handy to kill off 'Access Denied' crap.

My goal is to pretty much revert any win system, including Win10 - to Win2000. It makes it pretty much unhackable. Even XP is fairly immune, as the new boogers cant even fire up in it.

This is admittedly, a divergent, if not downright eccentric method of system security, and one I would certainly not recommend for casual users. But it works here, and works fairly well. Being behind two hardware firewalls also helps.

The way I see it is that there are thee vectors for boogers:

1. Email - rarely use it. Fire up thunderbird around once a month. Run my business off a website, and prettty much ignore anything sent here.

2. Web. - have my browsers fully armed with security addons. NoScript, Ghostery, ad blockers, most metadata blocked or forged. Pretty much invisible to port scanners.

3. Updates - I regard these as pure evil for *my* systems. They usually wreak havoc as most of my regularly used programs are fine tuned, and even hacked. If it works i dont fix it, unless there are some seriously useful new options. It is also a classic mode of attack by everyone from Yigor in Minsk to the spooks at Langley. For freeware its fraught with peril, as perfectly working software is often degraded to beggarware by updates. Like NitroPDF.

A generation ago i learned to hack into other systems, but quickly grew bored with it. The fun part was hacking my *own* systems. It is that mindset I use on both Win and Linux. In Debian these days I always boot to root, where I routinely run stuff that normally wont run as UID0. A full armory of compilers and libs comes in handy!

One of my earliest memories is sticking a bobby pin into a wall socket.

I never stopped.

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Why not just use Gimp? It's for Windows.

And what about Vegas Pro? I know you have to activate it, but I think you can use Youtube for videos on how you can do it.

Isnt Vegas for videos?
I need something for that, as I really dislike Premiere.

I also have a ton of Red Giant softare, untested yet. Any good?

Adobe is often unnecessarily complicated for what should be simple operations, like cutting and pasting. Need something simple and *intuitive* for videos.