15-Minute Reviews :: Defense Wall HIPS v2.09

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Defense Wall HIPS version 2.09 by SoftSphere Technologies – An application to give you a sandbox-style protection with your applications.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“DefenseWall HIPS is a strong barrier between you and malicious software (spyware, adware, keylogers, rootkits and viruses). You can now allow yourself safe browsing, open any e-mail attachments and install new software – DefenseWall HIPS gives you new vector of safety and freedom in one easy to use package. Annoying popups not included.

As DefenseWall HIPS doesn’t rely on a list of ‘already known as bad’ software modules, its efficience is much higher that your anti-virus and anti-spyware software has nowadays.”

Quick Pros

• Interface is easy to use and set up
• Explorer add-in works quite well
• Rollback functionality handy for removing changes
• Go Banking/Shopping very unique concept
• Overall seems to work well

Quick Cons

• Explorer shell add-in could be expanded
• Rollback functionality was a bit awkward
• Identification of status of application only in titlebar
• Does not give a strong sense of protection

Expansion

After you have completed installation and rebooting of your system, you will be greeted by a System Tray icon. The System Tray icon gives you many of the common day-to-day uses, such as access to the application’s window (Main), ‘Disable Protection’, ‘Go Banking/Shopping’, ‘Stop Attack’, as well as other options. When you enter the main window of the application, you are greeted by a tabbed interface; Stop attack, untrusted applications, events log and advanced. Stop attack offers the ability to exit all untrusted processes, as well as access to a process list and to the rollback functionality. Untrusted applications allows you to manage all of the untrusted applications as well as enable and disable certain applications on the go. Advanced allows you access to setting up functionality such as Defense Excludes (Allowing untrusted applications to modify files or folders even through the protection), Secured Files (Allowing you to explicitly deny untrusted applications access to specific files or folder such as My Documents), and Download Areas (Areas in which files can be deposited and are automatically set up as Defense Excludes for 15 days).

The Explorer shell extension gets you set up with an additional right-click option set which gives you quick and easy access to setting up files as untrusted, secure or as a member of the Desense Excludes. It is a lot quicker for many uses to get files set up how you want other than using the application’s main window. My biggest issue is that there is no quick visual cues to tell you what the files already are; Instead you have to either resort to the main application window or right-click the file and use Defense Wall HIPS’ file properties option to bring up a pop-up window on the file.

The rollback functionality is handy as well, though it is a bit obscured in the main application under the Files and Registry Tracks (In Stop attack). It offers the capability to be able to not only wipe all changes made by untrusted processes, but also allows you to wipe to a certain point in time as well. This is a little different than other applications I’ve tried in the past; This idea is great if you have been infected, to be able to go back in time and then still recover files that may be in the untrusted tracks before wiping everything. I did find this functionality a little awkward to find as well as to clean; It’s just not as friendly as the rest of the application overall which it should be a little higher up for accessibility.

One of the most unique features of this application is the Go Banking/Shopping application. What this feature does is that is launches a web browser into an isolated run itself, separate from even other untrusted or trusted applications; This prevents any other application from invading and password-sniffing or otherwise. There is a bit of a quirk with this; To use the feature, it has to exit all other untrusted applications first. It would be nice to see this expanded to allow any application to be ran under this mode, instead of just the web browser.

While I am not a security expert, I did think to toss a few viruses I found for previous reviews at this application and it does appear to do its job in preventing permanent infection, though as with any application, caution should always come first and shouldn’t become completely reckless.

A few notes on this application I do wish to make. First off, as mentioned above, it is hard to identify applications that will launch untrusted, and it is also awkward at times to tell if an application is untrusted while it is running; Although the application places a message in the titlebar of the application when it is untrusted, I do have a few applications where this will simply fall off the end of the titlebar because of the already-long title. I would like to see some options on indicating application windows and Explorer file icons display their status. This lack of notification does lessen the feel of strength with this tool over other tools I have tested in the past.

Final Verdict

While there is aspects of this application that does appear to need fine-tuning, it is relatively easy to set up and get running. The application does seem to feel like it would be better for a more-advanced user with the lack of good visual cues. For free, if you are looking for a tool such as this application, this may be something worth trying to see if it suits your needs; The rollback and ‘Go Banking/Shopping’ functionality does offer a unique angle on the application. As for paying $29.95 for this title (And $10.95 each year thereafter), it does not appear to be a bad application, and I would likely recommend either it or BufferZone (Review here)

Posted by BladedThoth on Tuesday, November 20, 2007