Discovery of Windows XP firewall covert abilities

SphinxSoftware has started the development of a new consumer product line for personal network security.
The first product of the line - XP Firewall control – has been released.
Basing on the firewall included into Windows XP Service Pack 2, XP Firewall control expands area of application of the firewall and offers new approaches to application security.
Every application being behind the firewall has its own object and unique behavior. Therefore, there is no a universal approach to determine beforehand which type of network access will be safe for an application.
As the result, the application network access requires individual adjustments. The purpose of the adjustment is to define a proper "security zone" for the application.
XP Firewall Control allows composing, storing and using the security zones for a single application and for application group. Using all the present abilities of Windows XP firewall, XP Firewall Control extends them with application level security model, introduces per-application named security zones and allows security zone manipulation at friendly consumer level.

Features:
Complete usage of Windows XP firewall benefits;
Handy application access control on the desktop;
Per-application security zones;
One touch security settings for applications;
Group security zone management;
User-defined zones;
Security zone composer;

About XP Firewall Control:
XP Firewall Control (http://sphinx-soft.com/XP) is a free product to extend capabilities of native Windows XP SP2 firewall.
XP Firewall Control makes the use of the firewall suitable for precise and handy security tuning. Originality of XP Firewall Control consists in new approach to application access manipulation basing on the most widespread personal security solution.

About Sphinx Software:
Sphinx Software (http://sphinx-soft.com) is a software development company focused on personal security products (x-wall-series.com) and flexible software instrumentation for log analysis (logpatterns.com)