Technology for everyone
Security
You have the power!
03 years ago
The first line of defense is behavioiur modification, don’t do those things that will cause you computer to be compromised. As with all lines of defense, you need to have a plan B.
These are the programs I recomend to protect your computer in case plan A fails.
- Spybot search and destroy- I use the inoculation feature, the host file to redirect bad sites to dead addresses.
- Spyware Blaster – I use it to block out known bad scripts and bad active-x scripts.
- Windows defender- to monitor registration changes and block them. Also watches for malware and can remove it.
- AVG free – antiviral program that is free and doesn’t have a lot of overhead.
- Firefox – I like the UI of Firefox and several add ons, in particular I use noscript. Noscript will block the script on a page from running until you have authorized it.
The use of thees programs will not guarantee safety, nothing will. What they will do is work with you to protect your computer.
Security, security, security – there is no place like root.
1You may think that the anti virus program you have will solve all you security needs. While it can help it is only one aspect of stopping spyware. Here where I work I have chosen to use three anti-spyware programs in addition to our anti virus solution to provide a safer computer environment in a public setting, although I use these my self to protect my computers.
One may think that because lab computers are locked down and, in some cases, frozen that these machines are safe. The sad truth is that they are at more risk than your home computer. The users of these computers are not worried about infecting the machines because it is not their machine. It is only prudent to add relevant and known security software to prevent known compromises and mitigate unknown. It is also a fact that no one tool or method of protection is adequate. As with protecting your health, protecting the health of a PC require various methods used together to provide an overlapping cloak of protection.
To that end I employ three free programs that work in different ways to protect the computers.
Spyware detection and removal, enhanced pop up blocking, block settings modifications, and blocks the installation of spyware quietly.
I only use a few of the many features this software has. I use the site blocking feature. This allows you to block sites that are known to be malicious, currently 32,572.
I also implement the hosts file augmentation feature. This feature allows me to place dead address statements in the host file to disallow access to the known malicious sites altogether. By doing this I keep the computer from talking to the site regardless of the threat, which may be a day zero threat and unknown to the previous feature.
Prevent the installation of activeX based spyware and other malicious software. Block known malicious tracking cookies in IE as well as Firefox. Do it all passively, causing no slowdown of the system.
Because these are installed on machines that have the disk structure locked the only one that can update itself is Windows Defender. However, during breaks it is easy to update the other programs and bring the protection level current.
This does not mean that we are secure, as with all security issues constant vigilance and reviewing of methods and measures must be done. Security is an ongoing process that will have its triumphs and failures.
Just call me Master.
0Firefox has a great service that lets you store the passwords for web sites in it and then automatically login when you return to that site. Unfortunately it also allows you to be taken advantage of unless you properly set it up.
After starting Firefox go to the the tools menu and select options, then select security. In the center of that window you will see passwords. If you have already used this facility then you will notice, when you click on show passwords, that there are sites and with a second click on show passwords, and a confirmation, they are viable.
In order to use this facility check the “Remember passwords for sites” box and protect your passwords, set a master password by checking the “Use a master password” box. Click the exceptions button to see site you have opted to not remember passwords for and remove site that were selected in error.
When entering a password there is a strength meter showing how strong a master password you have selected. you should have at least one capital, one number, and one punctuation mark in a minimum eight character password. With some experimentation you will be able to select a very strong password to protect this facility. One add part to this is even if you have entered the master password to allow automatic logins, the password is needed again to show the passwords as demonstrated before.
Now what was that password?
0You just got that great deal on a used computer from work, or from a surplus sale. You get home turn it on and you need a password. the user name is someone you have never heard of and every thing you try fails. You change the name to administrator and it is the same. well your in luck, I have found an Emergency boot CD that will solve this problem, for windows anyway. You have to download the files and make an ISO, or CD image, file that you can burn to a CD using your CD software or download the demo version of Nero. Naturally you will have to do this on a machine you have access to.
Once you have made the CD you will boot the problem machine from CD and choose the password utility. This CD is based on a small Linux kernel and you will see many other utilities that come with the program. Read the screens as you go and go slowly. When I tried this it work well and you select the defaults along the way. Clear the password rather than change it.
The spider in the fly.
0I recently received and email sent by a concerned person to all their friends warning of a new poisonous spider in the US, hiding in airline toilets of all places. This, like most apocryphal emails is a hoax. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/insects/telamonia.asp
It is hard not to just believe that these are real and warn everyone about the dangers, just in case. We would all feel bad if someone was bitten in the airplane facilities. The truth is that sending these things around is worse. The misinformation and lies just get everyone worried and then the one email to our close friends becomes a billion messages to the world just to keep them safe.
Please when you get these either have a good laugh and ignore them, or go to http://www.snopes.com to check, and then laugh and ignore them. Your friends will thank you for not filling up their email with stuff, and you will sleep easier at night knowing that the spiders are not in the toilets of planes waiting to bite.