The Claim: Lockdown2000 protects against attempted computer breakins.
In addition to direct claims made by Harbor Telco, they provide on their website a large number of testimonials which serve to suggest Lockdown stopped many attempted breakins. Most of these seem to be in reference to the port Lockdown monitors. Others refer to trojans. But the direct claims of Harbor Telco primarily refer to shared resources.
[1] Page titled "Lockdown 2000 - The Complete Fire Wall For Windows!": "LockDown 2000 prevents anyone from any computer in the world from getting into your computer."
[2] Page titled "Lockdown 2000 - The Complete Fire Wall For Windows!": "Once you go online and, even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break into your computer. Now, Lockdown 2000 will act as a FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[3] Page titled "manual" "On the WAN, everyone is fair game to the indiscriminant [sic] hacker. Information Technology professionals know quite well that no one is safe on any given WAN. Even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break in. Newly developed Lockdown 2000 will act as a FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[4] Page titled "manual" "Even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break in. Newly developed Lockdown 2000 will act as a FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[5] "If you are connected to the Internet and a hacker wants to break into your computer, he will do it if you don't have some kind of security. One way to do this might be by using a password-cracking tool. If you protected your drives by adding a password to your folders, a hacker can still load a password cracking utility, and without your knowledge, pound away at your folders until it finds your password."
[6] Page titled "Reseller Fax Sheet" "Once you go online and, even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break in. LockDown 2000 will act as a true , unbreakable FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[7] Page titled "Internet Security News": "Once you go online and, even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break in. Lockdown 2000 will act as a true, unbreakable FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[8] Page titled "LOCKDOWN 2000 - Innosec Technologies": "LOCKDOWN2000 isn't just a password protection system. Once you connect to the global internet, a creative hacker can run special snooping software to locate you, and break into your computer without knowing any passwords. Lockdown 2000 acts as a true, unbreakable FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[9] Page titled "Lockdown 2000 - The Complete Fire Wall For Windows!": "Once you go online and, even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break into your computer. Now, Lockdown 2000 will act as a FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[10] Page titled "LockDown2000": "Once you go online and, even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break in. LockDown 2000 will act as a true , unbreakable FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
[11] Page titled "DownLoad or Purchase Lockdown2000 - The Complete Fire Wall For Windows!": "Once you go online and, even if you password protect your computer or LAN, a hacker can still run cracking software and break into your computer. Now, Lockdown 2000 will act as a FIREWALL between your computer and the Internet."
Despite careful searches, I have been unable to find any instance anywhere, wherein Michael Paris or any principal or seller of Lockdown2000 has ever qualified the claim that Lockdown2000 stops "breakins." No statement is made anywhere to indicate that intrusion may be possible while Lockdown runs. Also, no statement exists which corrects or qualifies the idea that contacts on the one TCP port Lockdown monitors are in fact a real security threat. Instead, the idea that monitoring this single port (out of 65,536) stops "breakins" is deliberately promoted; and the suggestion is unmistakable that Lockdown somehow prevents password cracking.
Does Lockdown Protect Against Attempted Breakins?
In this respect, Lockdown does three things: it monitors NetBIOS shares;
monitors a single TCP port; and it claims to protect against
attempted intrusion via remote-access (backdoor) trojans. We'll
address those one at a time.
As noted elsewhere in this review and demonstrated in my tests, if Lockdown is used as the only means of defending shared folders, it is seriously ineffective. Files can be deleted or renamed one after another at will using any remote connection, and Lockdown is helpless to prevent it. It will merely sound its alarm and attempt to log each connection. On a sufficiently fast link, such as a cable modem, an intruder can transfer files to and from the share. The faster the link, the larger the files.
There is at least one circumstance wherein it is impossible to password-protect a read-only shared folder containing potentially critical information about your system. Given a fast link, large amounts of data might be read from this folder despite Lockdown's attempts to deny access.
If a share is protected by a password, Lockdown becomes almost irrelevant. A well-chosen password, as I point out elsewhere, is for practical purposes impossible to crack. But cracking attempts remain quite possible, and Lockdown is completely unaware that any cracking attack is underway.
A password-guessing script can run unnoticed indefinitely without any warning from Lockdown. Only if the password is cracked and a connection is made, will Lockdown sound its alarm. The warning may come too late; it requires only seconds to delete any number of files or folders despite Lockdown's attempts to disconnect.
The answer with respect to shared resources is NO,
Lockdown does not protect against attempted breakins. Its one
service is to alert the user, assuming he is present, of the
connection after it is made.
Lockdown's monitoring of a single port is essentially no protection against anything. Its only service is to inform the user that someone out on the Net is scanning for vulnerable systems. Only the NetBus trojan is likely to ever use that port; however NetBus is capable of using any port. Someone could scan any or all of the other 65,535 ports on a Lockdown-equipped machine with never a clue to the user.
The answer with respect to monitored ports is NO,
Lockdown does not protect against attempted breakins.
Unless it successfully detects and removes a trojan, which is by no means certain, Lockdown cannot protect against any connections with that trojan.
So again the answer is NO.
The Lockdown site contains a tale which I feel I should point out in this context.
http://lockdown2000.com/praise2.html "LockDown 2000 Report":
I ... recently received a game that had a trojan attached to it. ... within seconds, a siren was sounding and I was getting information that someone was trying to access my computer. Lockdown notified me that someone was trying to hack into my computer, and even gave the the person's IP address and service provider ... It knocked the person offline... J. Schaetz, Abbeville, SC
In view of Lockdown's behavior in my tests, this tale has to be false or its writer gravely mistaken. Supposedly Lockdown spots ALL trojans. If Lockdown had detected the trojan upon installation, then there could have been no connections to the trojan because it would not have been running. If it did not spot the trojan, Lockdown by nature of its functions was helpless to sense or report upon connections to the trojan, much less interfere with them. If we assume the trojan created a hidden share, the story makes better sense but it still doesn't work. In my tests, Lockdown proved incapable of reporting the IP address of a shared-resource contact, and never executed a WHOIS query on its own.
Lockdown2000 v2.5.4 does not protect effectively against attempted breakins. It is substantially blind to them.