Securing Windows
A few things you can do to keep Windows clean.
Tonight I will share with you a couple ways you can keep your Windows clean. These are simple, quick, and proven ways to keep your installation clean and free of those pesky spyware and malware programs. I’ll also share with you a couple tips on staying safe online.
How many of you use Internet Explorer 6? None of you, I hope. The Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 web browser has been so riddled with security problems; sometimes it’s safer to browse by downloading html from the pages with netcat! Okay, all joking aside, my first security recommendation is to get a different browser. Microsoft has recently released Internet Explorer 8, there are also very popular alternatives to the giant’s in house browser – Firefox and Opera are two very good browsers each with their own advantages. The Firefox browser is quite extensible and is the subject of the remainder of this article. I believe that in order to have a secure computing environment you need to explore other options. If you’re a Microsoft fan and you haven’t tried Firefox, try it. Why download tons of anti-spyware utilities if you can avoid infection in the first place? For this, I recommend you install the Ad-block and NoScript plugins. They’re both totally free and will stop websites from performing tasks on your behalf. Such programs are capable of installing software, accessing and making changes to your hard drive, and recording information. I don’t know how many of you knew about this, but for a while there was a major flaw in the way Internet Explorer handled images, an attacker could embed some code into a gif file and load it to their web server, more often than not this software activated what’s called a reverse-shell. Basically a reverse shell works like a call back. When you call a person and leave a message, they often call you back. It’s the same concept, when the program loads into your computer, it calls home and downloads a file, from there it executes the file and the attacker connects to your computer, taking control of it. So please, if you have not already done so, please update your web browser!
Next, I would like to discuss Microsoft’s technet. If you haven’t already done or, or never knew it existed, surf over to http://technet.microsoft.com. It’s at this website that Microsoft release updates when the fixes to problems are discovered. These fixes later filter into the regular Microsoft update, but it’s nice to stay current, especially if you run your business from home and demand nothing less than very current security patches.
Finally, my last task for you is to investigate a program called Truecrypt, it is a program which creates encrypted folders. Hackers and malware alike cannot attack what they cannot read.
I hope you enjoyed and will follow these tips. They could save you a lot of trouble in dealing with viruses, malware, or evil-doers on the internet.
