New App: System Process Firewall

I am coming close to completing my new program called System Process Firewall. The original reason I created this was to battle spyware, as well as stop others from running programs on my computer without my permission.

Pretty much the program actively scans all of your system processes (programs that are currently running) and compares them against your approved and blocked list. Any programs that are not approved or are in your block list are stopped immediately.

The program has two modes:

Low Security Mode - Any program may run except those that are on your block list

High Security Mode - Only programs that have been specifically approved by you will be allowed

There is also a new feature called the keep alive list, this is a great feature to those of us who run things like avedesk, a dock program, objectbar, vanim, and all other things that may crash from time to time. You simply add any program to this list, and my program will ensure that those programs stay running.

At the user's discretion, password protection of settings is available.

Right now I am cleaning up code and working on increased performance, so far cpu usage is very low (only 1% when idle) and memory usage is also low.

I would like everyone's input on this so far, I want more features into this program and am open for suggestions. I will be releasing this program within the next couple of weeks.

#392586

This sounds like a good idea. Sounds a lot like the program "WinPatrol"

#392593

I guess it is a little like that, i'm not coding this app for the purpose of protecting a computer from spyware or malware, this is more for modders like us to keep things going the way we like them to. I don't want anyone to think that you can use this in place of programs like windows defender or antivirus.

So far the keep alive feature has been testing out well. I closed my dock and within 4 seconds it reappeared, objectbar took about 10 seconds (it actually depends on how long the program itself takes to load, when the program detects a dropped process, it is re-executed immediately)

I am working on adding an event log, and am adding encryption for added security of password and settings. Also since I have a network, I thought it would be a good idea to allow the user to configure settings globally or per station.

#392596

Wow, sounds like a great idea. Would love to have this running on my PC. Looking forward to its release.

#392628

Wow, that "keep-alive" list sounds very unique. I look forward to seeing this released!

//Tag edited because this isn't yet a release .

-NC

#392666

Keep-alive should have priority setting available, if you don't mind..

#392728

GuitarMonster, very impressive feature list! For everyone here to be happy, please, try to make some interface to monitor and control your "firewall" state from within external programs (COM Automation interface, for example). This might decrease the security level, so be smart making it.

For example, when the COM client tries to operate any method of your program interface, it must provide some "cookie" parameter (32bit integer), which the client should get from some init() method at the very beginning. And when init() is called, the user is prompted with your proggy's dialog box, which tells the details about client and asks for a user's password to confirm the client's action. That's a very raw approach, but something like this might help widget developers to make a unique thing and, on the other hand, still provide the security which the program was designed for. You know, the XP SP2 security center can be disabled by any trusted program from within system. Don't repeat these mistakes.

#392920

Arzen, i'm not sure what you mean as far as a priority setting

so far if any program stops running, my program checks to see if it is on the "keep alive" list, if it is it is relaunched. Please explain what you mean by priority setting

also i'm not sure if I want to enable other programs to control this, since it does posess a lot of power (it can close any process running on your system) for that exact reason. I can't really think of any scenarios where you would need to do that. If you could give me some examples, I will see what I can do. Maybe some way to input your password into your widget or app, then the widget would authenticate with my program in order to establish communication, If I can do it I will. I have to get more familiar with the COM automation interface.

I have made awesome performance improvements in the last 24 hours. The keep alive function reaction time is extremely fast, it detects the dropped process immediately (the dock is back in about 4 seconds, objectbar takes about 6 seconds). I think I probably will need to add the ability for my program to detect if you are currently shutting down your computer, so we don't have flashing docks and objectbars everytime we shut down the computer.

Another feature will improve the speed of shutting down your computer, you will be able to label processes for a "fast kill" when a shutdown is initiated. On my system I would put trillian, the dock, objectbar, avedesk, vanim and konfabulator on this list, when my program detects the system shutting down, it will kill all these programs in about a second making a faster shutdown

I gotta go to bed, i'm tired, been working on this thing for hours

#392924