The best way to determine if your computer’s (or router’s) firewall is working and optimised is to effectively try to penetrate it. Browser-based utility ShieldsUP! tests your firewall for vulnerabilities and kinks in your computer’s defence.
After you give ShieldsUP! permission to run tests on your computer and choose a test type, it looks for weaknesses and openings that hackers and intruders can use to attack your machine. You can test in five different categories: file sharing, common ports, all service ports, messenger spam and browser headers. When a test completes, ShieldsUP! will displays the results and offer suggestions for how you can improve your security, with detailed explanations. It’s a good tool for evaluating your computer’s security and determining whether you need to amp up your computer’s defences.
Share how your computer fared in the comments.
ShieldsUP! [via NYT]
Hartmut Meier
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 8:55 AMPity that they off line !!!!!
lost89577
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:11 AMShieldsUP! has been overloaded by LifeHacker!!
We’re sorry to have to pull the service down, but the MASSIVE FLOOD of users sent to us by the mention on Lifehacker (which we TOTALLY appreciate!), coupled with the length of time (a few minutes) to test all ports, can possibly be serviced. Once the massive wave of usage has passed we’ll be able to put ShieldsUP! back online and we sincerely hope you’ll give it a try. But for the time being we’re just too swamped! Sorry!!
posted on the website
Tim Rosser
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:13 AMI’ve heard of the Slashdot effect, but this is the first time I’ve seen the Lifehacker effect.
trk
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:31 AMGRC’s ‘ShieldsUp!’ test is literally 7 or 8 years old by now….. Is this really news? :\
Also, the test is down at the moment due to the traffic generated by this.
pointybeard
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:38 AMoh oh … Looks like we killed it: http://cl.ly/3Zq
Simon
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:41 AMUm, you broke it guys! They have taken the service down (temporarily) due to the flood of traffic generated by your article.
Good to know that people read your articles! :)
Joel Carpenter
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:41 AMThe power of LifeHacker. You broke it!! :)
Brendon
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:48 AMYou broke it…. The site is still down from yesterday :P
Ethan Jones
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 10:11 AMthe site is displaying a page that says:
“We are SO SORRY to have to temporarily take the service offline — which has been up for many years and has performed more than 83 million port security scans for people.
But we cannot possibly service the MASSIVE FLOOD of users sent to us by its April 7th, 3:00pm mention on Lifehacker (which we TOTALLY appreciate by the way!) due to the length of time (about a minute or so) required to test each visitor’s ports.
Once the massive wave of usage has passed, we’ll be able to put ShieldsUP! back online and we sincerely hope you’ll come back and give it a try! But for the time being we are just too swamped! Sorry!!”
looks like ill have to wait till the site is back up and running at full steam…
Matt
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 10:14 AMHaha, “ShieldsUP has been overloaded by lifehacker”
Loughlan
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 10:18 AMIt appears that the GRC website is no longer running any tests due to it getting slashdotted (lifehackered?).
In a post on their site:
ShieldsUP! has been overloaded by LifeHacker!!
We are SO SORRY to have to temporarily take the service offline — which has been up for many years and has performed more than 83 million port security scans for people.
But we cannot possibly service the MASSIVE FLOOD of users sent to us by its April 7th, 3:00pm mention on Lifehacker (which we TOTALLY appreciate by the way!) due to the length of time (about a minute or so) required to test each visitor’s ports.
Once the massive wave of usage has passed, we’ll be able to put ShieldsUP! back online and we sincerely hope you’ll come back and give it a try! But for the time being we are just too swamped! Sorry!!
Michael Xion
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 10:47 AM…ha ha lifehacker strikes again. Service unavailable due to load.
Zamiel
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 12:08 PMI’d like to mention that ShieldsUP is currently down due to the traffic they recieved after this post. Great work from the Lifehacker guys :)
Liammk
Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 1:09 PMLifehacker DDOS’ed shieldsup, lol.