Put it to the LeakTest, an amazing little program written by Steve
Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation.
Leaktest tests your firewall's ability to recognize Trojan horses.
Trojan horses are programs that hide in your computer and secretly communicate with
their masters. While you are online and unaware of their presence, Trojan horses open
one or more of the thousands of networking ports on your system and wait for orders from
outside.
With a good Trojan horse in place, a hacker can read your files, read every
key-stroke you make as you make it, even take over your system.
Most good firewalls can recognize one of the simpler Trojan horses
as soon as it tries to open a port. The firewall sees an application it doesn't
recognize trying to access the Internet and immediately alerts you.
But what if the Trojan horse assumes the name of a file you already permit to access
the Internet? What if it masquerades as, say, Internet Explorer or Netscape or AOL?
Until January of 2001, every personal firewall except
Zone Alarm
could be hoodwinked by that gambit. Many still can be.
We recommend you download
LeakTest and
make sure your firewall gives you the protection you need.
To use LeakTest, temporarily give it the same name as the file that
calls your browser into action, then open it and read the easy-to-follow directions.
Since LeakTest is written in assembly language, there is no need to install
it, and uninstalling it is as simple as dropping it into your desktop Recycle Bin.
(To find the name of the file that opens your browser, right-click on the icon you
use to activate it; when the menu opens, click on "properties," then on
"find target." The highlighted file will be the one whose name you want
to use.) [NOTE: Be sure to change the name of your copy of LeakTest back to
leaktest.exe when your test is completed.]
Use of any application linked to herein is subject to the limitations set forth
by its respective owner(s)
All applications linked to are offered free to the public as of July, 2003.
