Advanced User Observations #1

So, some people who's opinions i value pretty highly saw that i'd started a blog and thought they would offer their constructive criticisms and what nots. They were appalled at some of the things I was telling you. "Anti-virus all the time? Hogwash!" "Firewalls at the PC level?! Flabbergasms!" And other such nonsensical words.

And they're right. sort of.

They're perspective is from the user who knows whats out there, where the threats come from, and what an infected PC looks and performs like. They recognize performance knocks of %4 and know precisely where and how to fix the problem- but I'm not writing for them. I'm writing for you. You mother of two working 60 hours a week in a job that never sees the inner workings of your talking box. For you 30 year old plumbing professional that could care less what timing your RAM chips use. You 14 yr old Bratz buying child of 'The Hills' who knows when the computer is on, when it's off, and when its not giving you what you want.

For instance. My own setup wouldn't work for many of you. The only machine I consistently watch out for is the one constantly connected to the internet doing downloads and surfing and hurting spammers feelings, but on that one i scan maybe 5 times every 3 days and its all automated. The other machines? Every week. At best.I never hear from those machines unless theres a problem or unless I'm doing patches to something. Firewalls? I monitor traffic in and out at two points along my network but certainly not at every machine. But then, My apartment looks and feels like a cave and I haven't seen the sun in 8 years.

For those of you who enjoy the interaction with other human beings and don't want to get bogged down in the muck as long as it takes to 'sense' when your computers might be running a tad off the mark thats great. The world needs bright smiley faces running the joint and calling the tech support cave when and if theres a problem. Because I so enjoy our conversations.

They raised a good point though. I should at least give a glimpse at how some other people do their builds to illustrate whats important to different people at different levels about the things I've been talking about. And so: the Advanced User Observations.

After I explained to them it was more an issue of audience selection than my regression to the old ways, we went back to our respective caves and farmed Kara for OP l00ts while pwning n000bs until the wee hours of the morning when I dropped into a nice static sleep after counting sheep. 1... 10... 11... 100...
zzz..

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Password security through complexity.

One girl I know has a pattern. She picks a key and from that key on the keyboard she has a predetermined pattern and thats her password. Some people use personal info, some people use names and dates that are important to them some people use the names of pets and dead presidents and some people use 'God'.

"A password is considered 'strong' when it contains more than seven characters and includes at least one uppercase alpha, at least one lowercase alpha, and at least one numeric or symbol character." -Security Administrator Street Smarts pg 82

You want your password to be 'strong' because 'weak' ones have a lot of opposition out there. Brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, common sense, social engineering and easy passwords are just ripe for the cracking. Pets names, celebrities, birthdays, SSNs, all in jeopardy. And to that end, Some tips:

1. Try to use something familiar (personal) but complicated, even altered with numeric and special characters.

2. If you can help it don't use one password for everything.

3. If you suspect your account has been compromised, don't wait for proof, change your password immediately.

4. Make habit of changing your password (or altering it you lazy few) every now and again.

5. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever give out your password. If you think about it, the only people who might ask you for your password are people who probably shouldn't have it anyway.

6. Give me your password.

7. That was a test.

Computussin

In an earlier post I talked about making your computer safe on the internet. I talked about Anti-virus software, Spy/Adware, Firewalls and patches. You know you can get patches for your OS from it's manufacturer ( Windows from Microsoft, Jaguar from Macintosh, *nix from.. whoever made your particular flavor or whoever wrote an update for it. Love that OpenSource mindset).

But there's software everywhere! How do you know what you need? Well I'll tell you. In these next paragraphs ill tell you THE best anti-virus software, Spy/Adware, and firewall software ever written that will protect you from everything ever invented and bring your paper in every morning while it makes fresh squeezed OJ and slightly buttered toast! Ok not really. But I'll give you a few good places to start and some software that will give you a basis of comparison to make educated choices should you want to pick another. You'll have to make your own toast.

Anti-virus
I very humbly recommend using more than one piece of anti-virus software. Opinions vary, but I have my reasons. Virus code particularly new virus code can change itself to avoid detection. You tell your AV (anti-virus) software to watch out for people without hats, viruses can learn from that and put on a hat. It's much harder for virus software to keep up with 2 rule sets from two consistently updated anti-viruses programs than it is to keep up with one. The virus after all, hopefully, isn't getting regular updates. Also it's so important to update your anti-virus software for the easy reason that people who write viruses just have too much time on their hands and theres so many. New stuff is always coming out. The good news is people who write AV software know that and are often as hard at work to update the virus definitions for their software. Keeping it updated is often an automatic procedure and it only helps. A pretty good place to start your virus fighting enterprise is Avast. Avast is a fully functional Vista capable piece of anti virus software and is free to boot. (well, a version of it is anyway) Another good freebie is AVG. AVG has been going strong for a good while and A lot of people I know use this exclusively, it just kind of hums away in the background doing its job. auto updates, you can schedule them to run in the middle of the night, system wide scans- its pretty self reliant. Both these have pay upgrades, and If you want the extra bling they're well worth it but to get started you could do much worse than either or both of these. Also, don't forget that your ISP will probably have a deal with some anti-virus software attached and it's probably a pay version that comes with a nice long subscription. Cant hurt to give it look.


Adware and Spyware
Adware designed to choke your connection and show you ads whether you want them or not and spyware designed to do just that; to take control of or to intercept your interaction with your PC and the net without your consent and sometimes without your knowledge. Adware is whats going on when you're just sitting there and all the sudden an ad pops on the screen. You close it only to get 6 more and you close them only to have the process repeated 5 minutes later. Spyware is when your internet explorer's home page has been changed and you don't know why. When sites that used to go one place are redirected somewhere else? thats spyware too. It can even collect personal information about the sites you visit and your activity on them. Spooky. And all bad. Here are some ways to fight it.
Ad-aware and Spybot S&D are two heavy hitters to deal with these intrusions. They've been doing it for a good long while and even among the big league pay as you go these still hold their own. Again, after you set them up they can pretty much run on their own. I dont recommend running the scans right in the middle of your WoW gaming, but whatever floats your boat.

Firewall
There's 'fire' in the name it MUST be important. Well, it is. Firewalls form kind of the last line of defense for your network or computer. They're the bouncer for your club, the Muscle for your family business, your big cousin Vinny for your lemonade stand. Once th riffraff gets in, It keeps the riffraff from getting out again with anything important (and.. in the process lets you know riffraff has gotten in, in case you didn't know). In computer terms what it does is monitor your connection for programs that are trying to access it, and only letting the programs out that you want out. "Whoa whoa whoa sailor! I just got all this other software to keep crap out of my computer and now i need this for stopping the bad stuff in my computer??" you say? Yup. Even being as careful as you can be sometimes isn't enough. Bad things will happen. Part of the information you hopefully take from Parachutes and Safety-nets is what to do when bad things happen to you, and to minimize the damage that can be done. Say, you get a virus and you don't know (because.. who would intentionally download a virus?). And this particular viruses job is to flood the internet with spam mail about tuna fish and peanut butter and spread the word about the Nigerian relief fund they should send money to. It happens more often than you think. Vinny, ever vigilant, has been told that only a few programs should be sending email, and this virus isn't one of them- so when the virus opens the door to start sending its filthy spam it gets clotheslined and generally humiliated while Vinny alerts you to its presence. 'Excuse me, cousin user, should this be contacting everybody you know and a lot of people you don't?' Now, Vinny isn't a mind reader, and just like Vinny, your firewall isn't going to automatically know whats good traffic and whats bad traffic. Sure it'll know that historically some ports are used by bad software, but every user is different, and you'll have to teach it what you yourself use and what you don't. But once you've crossed that hurdle you've got a fairly sturdy solid individual watching the door, and usually thats enough of a deterrent to send bible salesmen and Avon ladies looking to advertise for free from your computer on their merry way. What's a good firewall? There's plenty. In fact you'll even find that some hardware, Routers especially and some OSs (windows XP SP2 on up included) have firewalls built in. Not to mention all the software firewalls. Some people get antsy about using more than one firewall and to be honest I have seen it cause problems, but if you want to do the job with software and you don't want to use your OS's (or it doesn't come with one) then why not Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm has been in the business a while too and they do a pretty good job if it's configured correctly. Your firewall, by the nature of its job, could very well make it look like its cut off your internet connection completely- but probably not.

All this software comes with marvelous documentation and it all does a pretty good job- so if theres a problem it's more likely that the answer can be found in the documentation than that i intentionally led you astray.It comes with all kinds of monitors so you can see exactly whats going on, and you should know that before you call your ISP asking them why you don't have service.
I promise *grin*.

New Trojan! Not Condom!

Account information spam is a term that has recently been turning up. Dubbed 'the latest spammer trick', it is definitely something to look out for. This is pretty much a multi pronged attack. Using a phishing technique to get you to a website that is infected by a virus and thus infect yourself. It works even if you realize that the site youve gotten to is bogus.

Be VERY VERY careful that you're sending your info to the correct place. If you have any reason to doubt the legitimacy of a website or email, call somebody and find out. Trust me, If your bank needs your information (if for some reason the wicked witch has come and wiped out all their customer information databases and their backups and the backups they keep offline in a vault in Toledo) then they'll let you know. Someone will call you, someone will mail you. A really informative article can be found here. If you're interested. Or don''t trust me. For some reason. I don't mind.

Hi. I'm a PC.

Your new PC is like a new pet. A pet that you plug into the wall and can play games on and visit Myspace. A pet that can cost -alot- of money. And so, like a new pet it has to be cared for and shown love or it will get sick and take a crap in your shoes.

Your PC runs an operating system. Windows, Linux, Unix, and all the big cats that are Macintosh: all OS's. And typically you buy your computer a good deal after an operating system has been released. In that time, people smarter than me have been staying up late at night with their little hats on (they all wear hats) finding little tweaks and problems in these OS's and after enough are found (or when a really big problem is found) a patch is released. Patches for OS's do lots of things. They fix security holes, they make things that seemed easy a little easier, they fix mistakes. Most of the mistakes they fix are tiny little things you wouldn't even know about. Some of them are not. And your computer needs to be patched so that viruses that exploit those mistakes can not hurt your new pet. Every manufacturer of Operating Systems has a place where you can get patches online, almost always from that company's website. This is a very *very* good idea.

It's pretty widely accepted that computer viruses are a bad thing. At the very least they make your computer do things you don't want it doing. Protect yourself. Anti-virus software comes in tons of flavors and just as many prices 9 in later blogs I'll tell you about a few of them). Since most viruses now a days are spread across the internet, many internet service providers have taken to offering subscriptions to certain virus software with their service. This is also a very good idea. But your virus software is next to useless if you don't keep it up to date. Viruses have all kinds of little tricks to hide from software or even to fool it into thinking it isn't there. Anti-virus software makers know this, and when they figure out the tricks they teach their software how to catch it. Hence the updates. Keep current.

Viruses aren't the only software that does the little wicked in your computer. Malware (a group term for adware, spyware and a few other nasties) is also a serious threat to your privacy and your computers performance among other things. Here again, since almost all malware is circulated online, most ISP's offer software to help you deal with it, and you should certainly take them up on the offer.

And one last thing. Firewall. It's can be a little complicated because it can do so many things- but for the purposes of new computer setup, we'll settle for installed and on. For now. A firewall's job is to monitor your computers connection to the world and give you some say in what gets in and what gets out. It can be annoying (Vista is notorious for this) but if configured correctly and after it's learned the system its running on, the good gets better. If you have a question about some software your firewall isn't sure about, look it up. and If you cant find an answer that satisfies you, deny the request. Thats a quick and dirty good rule of thumb. If you don't know ask, if you cant find out say no. Some people argue that your firewall is worthless if you aren't reading its logs. Firewalls keep records of what it lets in and out of your system and when and they can be a worthwhile read when you need to know. But for the most part if you keep all these suggestions in mind you should be okay.

Once again. Your PC is vulnerable out of the box. Patch it. Secure it from nasties. Firewall it. Protect your investment.