Mac security part 2...firewalls

[noSpeed]

Not sure why my last thread was closed. It seems that the general consensus is that I don't need antivirus. What about addon firewalls though? The community seems divided, and I think I'll play it safe with a firewall, and seeing that I will be visiting adult sites and online banking, I'd like to be well protected.

I've learned about Little Snitch (for outgoing connections), WaterRoof and NoobProf (for incoming connections). Can I run Little Snitch with either WR or NP? Will they interfere with each other?

 

[vansouza]

If you have a router then it likely provides a hardware firewall. There are front end apps like NoobProof... you might google that. Good luck...

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Not sure why my last thread was closed. It seems that the general consensus is that I don't need antivirus. What about addon firewalls though? The community seems divided, and I think I'll play it safe with a firewall, and seeing that I will be visiting adult sites and online banking, I'd like to be well protected.

I've learned about Little Snitch (for outgoing connections), WaterRoof and NoobProf (for incoming connections). Can I run Little Snitch with either WR or NP? Will they interfere with each other?

Yes you can run Little Snitch and ipfw (through WaterRoof or NoobProf) simultaneously, without fear of interference.
They work at different layers (LittleSnitch looking at applications trying to send data) and ipfw working at the IP-Address/Port level.

They very likely don't protect you from CrossSiteScripting, Java Script- Framing-Attacks and other such nastiness that is targeted directly at the browser-level. So be carefull when you surf to some shady web-sites while typing-in your bank password on another tab in Safari...

 

[noSpeed]

They very likely don't protect you from CrossSiteScripting, Java Script- Framing-Attacks and other such nastiness that is targeted directly at the browser-level. So be carefull when you surf to some shady web-sites while typing-in your bank password on another tab in Safari...

What software would protect me from this sort of attack? Right now, I restart my browser before and after doing my online banking.

 

[snberk103]

Best advice I've heard (other than not visiting dodgy sites to begin with) is to use one browser for banking sessions, and a different browser for everything else.

You could even go so far as to use a 3rd browser just for adult sites. You could totally lock down the security setting on this browser, and it would not affect the time saving features for normal browsing. I'd still shut down this browser before doing any banking with the other browser, though.

 

[The ArchAngel]

Best advice I've heard (other than not visiting dodgy sites to begin with) is to use one browser for banking sessions, and a different browser for everything else.

You could even go so far as to use a 3rd browser just for adult sites. You could totally lock down the security setting on this browser, and it would not affect the time saving features for normal browsing. I'd still shut down this browser before doing any banking with the other browser, though.

Going a step further, get Sun VirtualBox or some other VM client, and run a guest system (whatever flavor of Linux or Windows you choose and have easy and legal access to), fully patched, and use it only for banking. Better still, using an old laptop that's sitting in a closet for banking only would work.

Think that's overkill? It's not if you're proposing some potentially high-risk behaviors on the host machine. Further, if you have a decent machine, suspending and resuming a VM for banking is trivial and takes literally a matter of a few seconds.

 

[spooky69]

Would the private browsing feature of Firefox be of use in this scenario? Interested purely from an academic point of view.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Would the private browsing feature of Firefox be of use in this scenario? Interested purely from an academic point of view.

Negativ, this simply prevents web-traffic from being stored in the browser cache. It does not magically turn your browser into some ulta-secure version of itself.

 

[spooky69]

I realise there is nothing magical about it - it's not the iPad! I meant something more along the lines of being a different browser session and thus being of some benefit. Just a thought.