Firebird and Interbase 6.0 are being blocked by some security
products and this seems to be an increasing trend. This is not a
support request, but a question: Do members of the architects group
feel that this blocking will extend to more and more personal
firewalls, security suites and anti-spyware software and should the
Firebird community therefore be complaining to the vendors about it?

FB and IB6 accessed through a JDBC connection are both blocked by
McAfee Privacy Service and F-Secure Internet Suite, and IB6 is also
blocked by ZoneAlarm Security Suite. Other ZoneAlarm, F-Secure and
McAfee products as well as 22 products from other vendors are OK at
present. I wonder if this is a sign that the security software is
finding ever-more stringent ways of controlling TCP access and FB is
caught in the cross-fire. If so, the lights will eventually go out
on more an more FB and IB users who use the database in a personal
environment (i.e. with a database on their own PC not with a remote
server) as they upgrade their personal firewall or even have it
upgraded automatically for them under a subscription scheme.

I've looked in the bugtrack and I believe this is not related to the
NAT problem, or to Events being registered/Server hangs if auxiliary
(event) connection is not made [1178240], but correct me if I'm
wrong. I can't find anything on Google about this either, but I think
its a new issue. I've been using IB6 for three years and only just
got hit by ZoneAlarm Security Suite, so I started looking at other
similar products and how FB stood up in the same environment.

More detailed info, including Java source, is in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firebird-support/message/61830
but I'm not looking for an answer to that support question here, just
raising an alert to what might become a worsening problem over time.
My firebird-support message 61830 also lists 22 security products
that are OK at present, as well as two that are unknowns as there's
no trial version available.

Roy