I have long been looking for an outbound application monitor and blocker for Apple’s Mac OS X operating system that would function like ZoneLab‘s ZoneAlarm on Microsoft Windows. I think I finally found one in Objective Development’s Little Snitch (Commercial $24.95, free three hour demo). What both ZoneAlarm and Little Snitch do is watch your computer’s outbound internet ports and popup an alarm anytime anything new tries to open an internet connection from your host. You can then decide to allow or deny that program access to the internet from your computer, and you can add your rule to a growing list of rules so that things that should get access don’t bug you anymore and things that have no business connecting out pop-up an alarm or simply get denied. It is a wonderful way to block spyware might get accidentally installed on your computer. It is a great way to detect trojan horses and the like. If you have a Mac running OS X, check out Little Snitch. If you have a Microsoft Windows box, you must run ZoneAlarm or something like it – the profusion of spyware, viruses, macro viruses, and exploits to Microsofts’ infamously insecure operating system mandate strong firewalls, application monitors, virus checkers, and spyware checkers. Thankfully on a Mac with OS X you simply need a decent firewall (comes with OS X) and this Little Snitch software is interesting if you are frequently trying out new software.
I still wish there was a “source visible” version of the same functionality available. Security software needs to be subjected to peer review for trust reasons. I don’t condone software piracy, but I really feel that software that is monitoring your system needs to be carefully reviewed.
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