Microsoft Patch Tuesday not a happy one for ZoneAlarm users
Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday has just been and gone, but its left a sour taste in the mouths of ZoneAlarm users. That’s because one of the 4 updates released confused ZoneAlarm’s firewall meaning anyone running it and installing the patch no longer had Internet access.
The specific patch that caused the problem is MS08-037, which fixed vulnerabilities in the Windows Domain Name System (DNS) that allowed spoofing to occur. For some reason the update meant that ZoneAlarm no longer recognised Windows accessing the Internet as a safe thing to do, so blocked it.
There are 3 workarounds ZoneAlarm has detailed that include setting the firewall to medium security, uninstalling the patch, or adding your DNS servers to the trusted zone of the application. The patch problem and solutions apply to all versions of ZoneAlarm including Free, Pro, AntiVirus, Anti-Spyware and Security Suite editions.
There is no word on when a proper fix will be released to allow the patch to be installed without issue.
Read more at Channel Register
Matthew’s Opinion
I’m sure there were a lot of calls to the ZoneAlarm helpdesk on Tuesday and Wednesday when this started happening. It wouldn’t have taken them long to figure out what was causing the problem and their workarounds did appear quite quickly.
It shows you how the different software security firms all seem to offer a similar service to consumers, but actually work in very different ways. In this case only ZoneAlarm’s implementation seems to be affected and none of the other security vendor’s solutions.
It’s up to Microsoft to work with the ZoneAlarm team to solve this issue as quickly as possible. At the moment users are either left running lower than desired security settings or without the patch applied. Both of which are not acceptable for a long period of time.
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