I don't think that's even possible. The best you could do is analyze a program and see if it does things that are "suspicious". Otherwise it's just going to match known binaries/strings.
It'd take an amazingly complicated scanner to detect if GlassWire was, for instance, capturing your DNS requests and sending them somewhere. Or allowing updates to get loaded into its process space. I'd guess you'd need a nearly general AI to determine if any program is malicious.
Our firewall uses the Windows firewall system so it doesn't add instability to your computer. I was afraid it would sound kind of lame to talk about the awesome firewall when it's more of a firewall manager.
I think the monitoring feature is the most useful thing because you can go back in time and see your network activity for up to 30 days, or of course clear your history if you want.
For Mac there is Little Snitch but for Windows I haven't seen anything that has a "network time machine" like we have and also gives notifications like we do. The way GlassWire organizes the data is kind of unique.
I made this application for myself due to my own paranoia.
We're working on a Mac version. Also I agree Little Snitch is cool.
We concentrate more on visualizing network activity and we have a "network time machine" feature our UI allows you to go back and forth in time. Also I don't like how Little Snitch always pops up those alerts. I wanted the user to see the alerts but not have to always "OK" every little network activity. I felt like users tend to just press "OK" all the time anyway...
The only true network data is via some kind of tap on the actual wire. We're considering adding a plug-in so you can do that but there are so many awesome tools out there for that already I'm not sure if we should. GlassWire is for everyday users to understand what's going on with their computer. There will always be ways to bypass the OS but I think GlassWire will still help in many situations.
Wow. I hate how so many Windows applications are considerably uglier compared to Mac counterparts. The Windows apps don't seem to push forward Windows design but rather get stuck in the Windows XP design days. This is beautifully designed and clear.
The graph visualization is prime, and I love that the peaks are "rounded" out instead of sharp declines (sharp declines would make it look more like a live stock ticker).
Extremely well done, and exactly something I have been looking for. I will keep an eye out for the Mac version.
Thanks! It was actually very difficult to make rounded peaks due to the way network activity tends to suddenly spike. Sometimes the mini graph at the bottom of the UI doesn't match up exactly with the top graph due to our rounded graph but we're improving it all the time.
I also hate the way spiky graphs look.
MahApps.Metro has been my go to for simple interfaces. Mix it with ReactiveUI and some saner DI, and it's just awesome. Thanks very much for your work!
It's a little over-simplified, I think. In migrating some technical writers to git, I thought it might be a good tool to introduce people to git.
I ran into 5 problems:
1. It spit out vague error messages, requiring repeating the action in the CLI to see git's actual, specific problem.
2. There's no option to do the initial clone via ssh, which was a problem because http was failing to download the full repository.
3. It can't do merges, so you end up needing to use the git CLI anyways.
4. It crashed repeatedly while trying to handle large (1GB) repositories. Very sluggish and occasionally unresponsive on smaller repositories, too, especially with large single commits.
5. Various minor bugs. People would ask me stuff like 'how do I discard changes?' and I'd discover they'd gotten into a state where the menu would not appear until the software was restarted. They found it difficult to know when something confusing was inherent or a bug.
I wanted to love it, because it looks like it's good for beginners. Unfortunately, being pretty is not the same as being easy to use.
I have run into 2, 3, 4, 5 as well. And in general, I often feel like the tool is not telling me what it is doing (especially while handling large repos when operations some time take considerably longer)
I have since switched to SourceTree and it is working out well so far.
GitHub for windows is not a beautifully designed Windows app. It's an app with an abomination of a UI. I immediately uninstalled it after using it for 10 minutes. The metro UI is such a disaster in terms of UI design.
GitHub for windows was awful last time I tried it. Didn't follow standard desktop application HIG and was annoying to figure out, sluggish. I've had a markedly better time with SourceTree. I hate it when apps force their own design instead of following the user's window manager settings and form.
Github for windows is mind bogglingly bad. It's like staring into the sun. Nothing works like you'd expect it. They do their own thing. They should consider using a design similar to btSync. Now that's a good clean UI/UX.
+1 for the nice design of this app! But personally, unless the curves represent actual data points, I think they're somewhat disingenuous. Granted they look prettier than spikes but they give a false representation of the resolution of the data.
On the subject of Mac counterparts, I highly recommend Little Snitch for this particular functionality.
I have no affiliation with the developer, I've just found Little Snitch to be quite useful and thought I'd share (admittedly it's graphs aren't as nice as this app's).
Also not affiliated but I've been using Little Snitch for about 5 years now, and I can't recommend this app enough. It's the first app I install on a new OSX installation.
I love the app and what it represents. You have a great story and motive behind it. I'm +1 for a mac version as I think your work is beautiful. I'll share this with a few friends.
Super useful if you spend a lot of time tethering. Just set everything to "ask" and build up your whitelist over time. After that, you no longer have to worry about remembering to turn off your torrents, CrashPlan, etc.
It might look good on "standard" resolutions but unfortunately it doesn't handle Windows 8.1 scaling and a high resolution monitor that well. For example the "Usage" tab is unusable for me with fonts cut off in half and labels to the diagrams unreadable.
There are windows design guidelines, most developers/ISV's adhere to them.
Another point: many companies don't want to spend any time or effort on design, as for most applications, it won't translate into additional revenue. I would argue that many customers don't even care what the app looks like so long as it works and they can figure out how to use it.
Also you don't want to have to re-learn how to computer for every single application you open because somebody got bored with the current state of design for a network traffic monitoring tool.
I think in this case, there is a difference between UX and Design. They do overlap, but not completely.
UX is about the user experience - or rather, the user understanding the program.
Design is about the application looking good.
You can have both, or you can have either one, or neither.
The command prompt is a good example of the former - I'm sure we can all agree that the design isn't great, but functionality wise, it's doing it's job perfect. Giving commands to experienced users.
Perhaps it's my understanding of basic 3D programs, but I would point to 3D programs being the exact opposite, having a great design without a good UX. I always feel like I'm limited, in that I don't understand the millions of options. The programs themselves looks great, but I just don't understand how to use 90% of their functions.
I agree. I hate how certain programs (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite) feel the need to re-invent UX paradigms in every new version. I 99% don't care how an app looks if it's useful.
I'm a Windows user (go on, press the down arrow) and I don't care about app design. Give me military ship grey windows, text menus and a way to hide all icons. Windows 2000 was for me the apogee of 2D design.
I'm in on Windows 2000. Active window titles that could be set to bright colors to distinguish the active window from all the others (mine was canary yellow). I miss you Win2k.
I don't have a Windows 8.x box to check on, but on Windows 7 you can still set the display attributes for active windows - it's just a bit more buried.
To do so:
* Right-click on the Desktop background, Personalize
* Select Window Color button/link at the bottom
* Select "Advanced appearance settings..." link
* Click on the Active Title Bar in the preview area, or
select Active Title Bar from the Item dropdown
* Customize the font appearance, including font, color, size and weight.
I may be wrong, but as far as I know, the only way to access these settings in Win8 (without extra apps) is regedit. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors has the keys you want.
There you go. Nothing wrong with the comment, but since you asked...
The people mentioning "this is an unpopular opinion", "why the downvotes" or "this will be downvoted to hell" always get the upvotes and indeed, I see the comment doesn't turn gray when I downvote so it means others already upvoted.
Despite flat design being categorized as a fad by design news today, I would LOVE a Win2k style desktop with flat design. Could probably just be a texture swap.
I think that you are missing out on the concept of design if you limit your understanding of it to the color and shape of the widgets. When it comes to Windows, I definitely prefer the W2K look, but I wouldn't say that I don't care about app design.
I will let them know, thank you! GlassWire is kind of like "Little Snitch" in the way that it shows you everything and lets you make your own decision on what you want to do, but we also add in some extra protections like malicious host alerts, ARP spoofing detection, DNS server changes, Host changes, and we let you know about changes to your applications that are accessing the network. For example if Chrome's certificate is changed or it's updated you should be alerted. Unfortunately nothing can stop trojans/viruses but we hope GlassWire helps some.
Beautiful indeed! Only tiny stray semi-colon: "Our Windows network security monitor also looks for; domains or IP addresses..." I wouldn't mention it but for that fact that attention to detail is clearly important to you judging by the design of both the site and the app!
Beautiful app, I looked at the Privacy Policy on the site & breezed through the Install legalize and it doesn't seem to include specific network traffic information being relayed back to remote servers in anyway (I easily could have missed this), can you confirm that you guys are not collecting network usage statistics from the app?
We absolutely can't see your network data and we don't want to see it. GlassWire checks for software updates and that network activity appears on the GlassWire graph. If you block GlassWire via its own firewall then you won't know about future updates.
You have to declare that the app is "DPI aware" in the manifest and implement few things that go along with that promise. Just google it, it's fairly simple.
While I got you here, can I ask how many people worked on this and how long did it take? Just curious.
This looks brilliant and is badly needed on Windows. However the fact that it's free gives me pause, especially since we're talking about privacy software that is not open source.
What usually happens with freeware like this is that it becomes adware or dies. I think you have enough features to charge for it now.
Thank you! The bottom of our index page explains that we plan to make a paid version with more features in the future. We're working on a list of paid features. I don't think it would be appropriate for a privacy type application to include adware so please don't worry about that.
As long as you keep the main functionality free - because more people need to be using this sort of app, and I feel having to pay would be a pretty significant obstacle.
You can use your VPN with GlassWire and it works OK but we haven't tested in detail. I used GlassWire with my own VPN and I didn't see any obvious problems so far.
Awesome thanks, I'll have to check this out tonight! Just a feature that I'm thinking of right now that would be nice is if it alerted you that your VPN dropped or was disconnected.
Yep, I second that feature request. My OpenVPN connection with redirect-gateway enabled sometimes looses its route definitions and suddenly all my traffic goes directly to the internet instead.
I just tested GlassWire with OpenVPN on Windows 7 64-bit. I get an instant bluescreen as soon as the GlassWire driver is installed and started and OpenVPN is connected. The order doesn't matter, as soon as both applications are active, boom. Please investigate. I had to manually remove the driver, because the bluescreen occurred during installation and corrupted the deinstallation routine.
Beautiful UI! Just curious: why not block connection attempts from new programs automatically? By the time a user has noticed and blocked future connections, it may well be too late.
On a related note, I recently tested a number of firewalls for Windows using Comodo's HIPS and Firewall Leak Test Suite[1]; the only one I found that passed all tests with virtually no setup or changes was SpyShelter Firewall[2]. Not an endorsement by any means, just an observation.
I use Little Snitch on my Mac. I found myself just "allow"ing everything all the time anyway. I think most users just get used to pressing "OK" and stop even paying attention to what they are agreeing to. I know I get lazy and do that myself. Instead I wanted to briefly alert the user and let them make their own decision, then we also added in some malicious host monitoring and other features to help. Users can use our "network time machine" feature to go back and time and see exactly what happened in the past. I haven't seen another product that does that.
Have you tried using Little Snitch along with Privoxy?
I find the combination works very well. You get two ways to block things
(Little Snitch rules and Privoxy rules) and because Privoxy is so easy to
restart you can make "Deny" your default behavior since if the site doesn't
show properly, just restart privoxy and hit refresh.
Great looking app btw. Haven't had to work on a windows box in a long
time but if I do I'm definitely going to try this out.
I believe the point is not being a firewall, but rather let the user know what's going on. Firewalls may cause all sort of problems for the common user by blocking by default, and still don't reveal privacy violations (e.g., whitelisted applications generating traffic at unexpected moments).
Downloaded it, love the idea and UI. My only niggle about the app now is that it could use better support for hidpi (the text is a bit jumbled). Other than that, great work!
I just installed this on a Surface Pro 3. First off great app, but just wanted to give you a heads up: The icons in the taskbar and notification area are blurry due to a HDPI screen. A good portion of the interface is cut off or broken likely due to scaling issues.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 280 ms ] threadIt'd take an amazingly complicated scanner to detect if GlassWire was, for instance, capturing your DNS requests and sending them somewhere. Or allowing updates to get loaded into its process space. I'd guess you'd need a nearly general AI to determine if any program is malicious.
Can it import existing whitelists or blacklists?
If there are competing products (paid or free), a comparison would be helpful.
LS has a similar network activity visualization. You can of course drill down by process and such: http://i.imgur.com/ZQX0XEa.png
As a power user, I like alerts for all unclassified network activity on my machine. No affiliation with obdev, just a fan of LS.
Edit: It seems it's using QT, impressive.
The graph visualization is prime, and I love that the peaks are "rounded" out instead of sharp declines (sharp declines would make it look more like a live stock ticker).
Extremely well done, and exactly something I have been looking for. I will keep an eye out for the Mac version.
https://github.com/blog/1151-designing-github-for-windows
It's also mentioned in the blog post you've posted.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the developers of MahApps.Metro, I hope nobody minds the shameless self-promotion
I ran into 5 problems:
1. It spit out vague error messages, requiring repeating the action in the CLI to see git's actual, specific problem.
2. There's no option to do the initial clone via ssh, which was a problem because http was failing to download the full repository.
3. It can't do merges, so you end up needing to use the git CLI anyways.
4. It crashed repeatedly while trying to handle large (1GB) repositories. Very sluggish and occasionally unresponsive on smaller repositories, too, especially with large single commits.
5. Various minor bugs. People would ask me stuff like 'how do I discard changes?' and I'd discover they'd gotten into a state where the menu would not appear until the software was restarted. They found it difficult to know when something confusing was inherent or a bug.
I wanted to love it, because it looks like it's good for beginners. Unfortunately, being pretty is not the same as being easy to use.
In the end, I introduced them to the git CLI, simply because I could always answer or find an answer to their questions about it.
I have since switched to SourceTree and it is working out well so far.
I have no affiliation with the developer, I've just found Little Snitch to be quite useful and thought I'd share (admittedly it's graphs aren't as nice as this app's).
Another point: many companies don't want to spend any time or effort on design, as for most applications, it won't translate into additional revenue. I would argue that many customers don't even care what the app looks like so long as it works and they can figure out how to use it.
Also you don't want to have to re-learn how to computer for every single application you open because somebody got bored with the current state of design for a network traffic monitoring tool.
UX is about the user experience - or rather, the user understanding the program.
Design is about the application looking good.
You can have both, or you can have either one, or neither.
The command prompt is a good example of the former - I'm sure we can all agree that the design isn't great, but functionality wise, it's doing it's job perfect. Giving commands to experienced users.
Perhaps it's my understanding of basic 3D programs, but I would point to 3D programs being the exact opposite, having a great design without a good UX. I always feel like I'm limited, in that I don't understand the millions of options. The programs themselves looks great, but I just don't understand how to use 90% of their functions.
To do so:
There you go. Nothing wrong with the comment, but since you asked...
The people mentioning "this is an unpopular opinion", "why the downvotes" or "this will be downvoted to hell" always get the upvotes and indeed, I see the comment doesn't turn gray when I downvote so it means others already upvoted.
In fact, I don't even care. There are more important concerns!
I lost you after this sentence. I thought you were about to use this program as a shining example of ugly windows software.
it would be nice to have more info about how you monitor the connection and prevent any Trojans from going around the monitor point.
Any chance you will support hi-res screens (see http://imgur.com/ztN8cL3)?
This is the information for DPI-Aware applications.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn46...
I would attach some source code from a game I wrote, but I don't have the source code of it at hand right now.
While I got you here, can I ask how many people worked on this and how long did it take? Just curious.
http://i.imgur.com/aieLXtJ.jpg
What usually happens with freeware like this is that it becomes adware or dies. I think you have enough features to charge for it now.
On a related note, I recently tested a number of firewalls for Windows using Comodo's HIPS and Firewall Leak Test Suite[1]; the only one I found that passed all tests with virtually no setup or changes was SpyShelter Firewall[2]. Not an endorsement by any means, just an observation.
[1] http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/cltinfo.html [2] http://www.spyshelter.com/spyshelter-firewall/
I find the combination works very well. You get two ways to block things (Little Snitch rules and Privoxy rules) and because Privoxy is so easy to restart you can make "Deny" your default behavior since if the site doesn't show properly, just restart privoxy and hit refresh.
Great looking app btw. Haven't had to work on a windows box in a long time but if I do I'm definitely going to try this out.