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WinSonar - protection against unknown programs
Posted by ClifNotes, Nov 2008, permalink PC Activity Monitoring
I first ran into this program years ago, back in the days when I was running Win98. Since then, Zancart has included more features and made it easier to use. WinSonar might satisfy even the most paranoid people when it comes to it's protection system. When you first start WinSonar it will offer to scan all your TCP ports and report any that are open. Open ports may indicate the presence of a Trojan or Spyware application running. While WinSonar is running it constantly monitors your PC for running processes that it doesn't recognize. This will help you take control of you PC and prevent unknown programs from taking control away from you. When it finds processes it doesn't know, it will allow you to choose whether the process is safe or needs to be eliminated. WinSonar installs easily and doesn't seem to be a system resource hog.
I was really impressed with the Online Shield option, which won't allow any new processes to launch while you are surfing the web. That should definitely reduce the chance of "Drive-by Downloads".
If you have any trouble using WinSonar or figuring out the rich feature set, it includes a very good help manual that covers all you need to know.
I am currently using the OnlineArmor firewall with HIPS and it includes much of the same protection that WinSonar offers. While I enjoyed trying out WinSonar, I simply don't need it right now.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Winsonar 2008 is a program specifically designed for process monitoring and system protection from unknown processes. The basic idea is that if the user could know a new program silently installed into memory, he could take appropriate countermeasures.
The program detects new processes running into memory alerting the user. The on-line status is also detected, asking then the user if an automatic termination of any unknown process is desired (this option can be also enabled by default). This leads to an active protection against trojan\spyware-infected e-mail attachments.
From version 7.xx an automatic "learning "feature is present: on first 5 program-startup all unknown programs will be accepted as safe, avoiding several initial alerts by Winsonar for all the programs normally in use during work sessions.
Website:
http://digilander.libero.it/zancart/winsonar.html
