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Similar Firewall solutions

CHEF-KOCH edited this page May 31, 2015 · 26 revisions

Index

Similar Android Firewall solutions

Generally there are six categories of Android Firewalls:

  • Firewalls which uses a local VPN for traffic filtering (Dr. Web Anti-Virus,[...])
  • Firewalls which use a separate own VPN (Android doesn't allow to use two VPNs together the same time) like Opera's Max/Turbo feature to compress/reduce the web traffic (if it's enabled the firewall may not work)
  • Firewalls which using iptables, like AFWall+, Droidwall, Avast,[...]
  • Firewalls which using a local HTTP proxy (or integrate it in Android's VPN) like AdAway, AdGuard,...
  • Browser or app related firewalls, like NoScript, Bluetooth Firewalls and such, which basically only blocking specific functions and not the traffic itself.
  • Dynamic egress filtering: Monitors all outbound network traffic and issue dynamic prompts (on-demand) in order to determine egrees filter rules. The rules are defined per application.

IPTables based:

Anti IMSI-Catcher (protects against IMSI/StingRay-Catchers and Silent/Stealth SMS):

Bluetooth Firewall:

Browser based Firewall (takes control over JavaScript,...):

VPN/Proxy based:

Xposed based:

Real-time iptables logging:

Internet Diagnostic Tool:

Dynamic egress filtering (links not working - it's only for historical reasons):

Non-root Android Firewalls

All of these firewalls working with a local Proxy/VPN service, which means that they not working with iptables like AFWall+. They only work on a app-layer size which fake a VPN connection, means the rules are applied on the VPN servers and not on the Android OS. The VPN package will be created to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic (which not need root access). The biggest problem is that such VPN services not work with WiFi tethering or WiFi hotspots. And another con is that you can't run other VPN services and VPN/Proxy's apps at the same time together.

We not recommend to use any no-root firewall for above reasons, there are others too e.g. see an German article: