ThreatFire 3 – Free Protection Against Zero-Day Threats

I am an Internet security freak and I make no apologies for it. The Internet today presents constantly evolving security risks to computers, and operating systems, that sometimes seem to me like science fiction.

Consider that every day there are increasingly more stories about computer viruses, adware, spyware, hackers, spam, denial of service attacks, phishing, vishing and other Internet frauds, so much so that these stories have become commonplace in the news.

The relentless evolution of these more powerful and destructive attacks against home computer systems has disclosed a gaping hole, a vulnerability to zero-day threats, in many users’ Internet security defenses. Zero-day threats are those that are defined as malware that has been written and distributed to take advantage of system vulnerabilities before security developers can create and release counter measures. Without tools that will identify and eliminate these threats to your computer, you run the risk of infection.

A powerful free tool, ThreatFire 3 from PC Tools’ – the developers of the highly regarded Spyware Doctor, blocks malware (including zero-day threats) by analyzing program behavior (heuristics), instead of relying only on a signature based database. ThreatFire 3 works together with your signature based security applications to increase the effectiveness of your security arsenal.

When ThreatFire 3 detects a behavior based threat, it goes into analysis overdrive by comparing the threat against its signature database; those threats that are recognized by the database are quarantined immediately. Unrecognized threats, or behaviors, are assigned a calculated risk level at which point the user has the option of confirming or blocking the action.

A good example of the effectiveness of this application was made clear to me, this week, when I was checking all of the ports on my Windows machine, and ThreatFire 3 immediately advised me that the Port Checker was attempting to send email from port 25. Of course it actually wasn’t, it was simply opening it for testing purposes. But if this port was being opened, and was being used by a bot, ThreatFire 3 would have identified this danger by its behavior and given me the necessary warning.

Based on my experience with this application, I highly recommend it as critical component in your overall Internet security toolbox.

System Requirements: Windows Vista, Windows XP

Download at: ThreatFire

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