Ive been running Zonealarm on all the Windows machines I look after ever since it came out. It goes through the odd annoying phase, but on the whole it has worked very well.

Today all of a sudden it has decided that the best way to protect my machines from internet badness is just to block the internet entirely as long as it is set to "high" security mode. Ive backed the security off to Medium and that has allowed the machines back online. This isnt a major security worry for me since they are behind a Smoothwall anyway, but does anyone have any ideas why it has suddenly happened? These machines have been running on high security setting for litterally years without problems until today.

Im going to quiz the users as to anything which might have snafud it, but I anticipate the usual blank looks and denials of responsibility.

Last time I had a problem with ZoneAlarm the thing decided it didnt trust anything and set the whole list to block in Program control...

Probably worth trying a reinstall and not carrying over the settings. Mine has the Internet on high security, always has been.

Or try contacting them? :shrug:

This just got sent round at work ::

http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/pressReleases/2008/LossOfInternetAccessIssue.html


Enjoy.

thanks guys, Beaker youre a genius

more info:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/11/zonealarm-fixes-glitch-caused

The whole DNS exploit at the root of this still hasnt been fixed properly by vendors. Adding randomization is just a quick fix.