A Trend in the Wrong direction

Discussion in 'Computer Security' started by Phoenix, May 2, 2005.

  1. Phoenix
    Honorary Member

    Phoenix 53656e696f7220 4d6f64

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    Over the last couple of months, I have noticed alot of queries relating to spyware, adware and virii, and the advice given, whilst following the trend, is actually heading users in the wrong direction, For those of you who have to share your computer with others, the trend is a little more meaningful, but still the wrong overall direction

    What I mean by this is, common advice these days is to have a firewall installed, use multiple different spyware and adware tools, especially the subscription based ones which are obviously better, I personally charge about £50 for a spyware removal job, £100 if virii are present as well, but I also try and educate my clients a little better

    Education is the correct direction we should be heading to tackle the spyware threat, we should be aiming for prevention not detection/removal

    Most computer users on this forum I assume have a fairly broad level of common sense, after all this is not really an end user forum, so I would expect that you would all know when clearly not to click 'yes' or 'open' am I right? ofcourse I am

    so why the prroblem? why do I hear stories of people with 4 spyware programs and an anti virus software installed? god knows, but with the real time nature of current programs its not good for performance, or for your hard disks

    As someone who has no anti virus, or anti spyware installed (I may occassionaly run one of somethings going amuck just to see remove it from the suspect list) I find it hard to believe that IT professionals with thier own machines have such a problem with spyware, so here are a few pointers!

    1. Gateway Firewall, get a router with a built in firewall, turn it on, and configure it properly, this is your first line of defence
    2. Alternate browser, IE has lots of holes in, we know this, but there are plenty of alternatives out there that work fine, Opera just released version 8, and Firefox is nearing the 1.1 mark, these are excellent browsers to replace IE with
    3. Common Sense, thats right, DONT open that attachment just because its from a friend, you know they never send you bugger all, especially birthday cards 6 months early, mpgs, avis, mp3s are generally ok, but dont go and open that exe or rar/zip, i mean you know that right??
    4. Browsing, be careful what you type, and what you click, pay attention to the real url not just the link text, this can reveal if your about to hit a dodge site or not, again this is common sense for the most part

    For those of you who share your computer, perhaps a spyware program is prudent, perhaps your kids are not that prudent at what they click on, but education can improve that, the direction should not be 'install more spyware scanners, update your reference files, install virii scanners, it should be 'watch what the f*** you click on, and where the f*** you visit'

    hope my pointers help even one person counter the spyware threat in a more productive manner :)

    This was a public service announcement brought to you by the PBC
     
    Certifications: MCSE, MCITP, VCP
    WIP: > 0
  2. AJ

    AJ 01000001 01100100 01101101 01101001 01101110 Administrator

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    Nice one Phoenix, some damn good advice there :thumbleft


    Thanks a lot
     
    Certifications: MCSE, MCSA (messaging), ITIL Foundation v3
    WIP: Breathing in and out, but not out and in, that's just wrong
  3. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

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    I'll second that AJ. But just to point out a couple of things in addition, as Phoenix said configure the firewall properly. There is plenty of advice available on the net so no excuses. Also if you're working for a larger company with corporate AV, keep the definition database up to date.

    As an example. We use Symantec corporate AV with managed clients. We have scheduled scans for mondays and thursdays and before then the AV server pulls down the defs. My problem is that over here in Switzerland at 10am Monday morning it checks the symantec site for new defs and sees the old (not updated ones) from the 28th and does the scans as it should. Later that day (4pm our time) the new defs are posted and guess what, too late for us. Now I'm running around with an outbreak of Sober.O.:cussing
     
    Certifications: A+ | Network+ | Security+ | MCP (270,271,272,290,620) | MCDST | MCTS:Vista
    WIP: MCSA, 70-622,680,685
  4. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    good advice phoenix. id disagree with the AV part at the very least - i for one would NEVER recommend not having one installed. spyware, i have a couple installed, but i wont install the ones which actively keep an eye on your system (although i am using panda AV at the moment which does this - but im not liking it too much!).

    Fergal
     
    Certifications: ITIL Foundation; MCTS: Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, Administration
    WIP: None at present

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