What do you do to protect your computer?
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that attacks on one’s computer have become increasingly robust and frequent in recent years. In years past, I could go months without a virus scan of my computer without significant ill effects. A couple of months ago, though, I had something of a galvanizing incident which demonstrated that, at least for the moment, that age is entirely past, and that the internet must now be treated with the same level of paranoid, panic-stricken fear that a walk through a once-busy city in the middle of the night during the first month of a zombie apocalypse should engender. Hungry, predatory monsters are everywhere, and to not actively protect yourself against them is no different than offering yourself up to them for their culinary delight.
I was out in my living room, playing my Playstation 3 for a few hours. I had left my computer running, as I am wont to do, but there were no programs active aside from my e-mail program, Eudora. When I got back to my room, I saw several new windows on my desktop, all of them posing as an anti-virus program which I knew I did not own, and which I immediately realized was the latest iteration of a long legacy of particularly noxious trojan viruses. It advised me in frantic tones that my computer was infected with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of serious and life-threatening viruses, and I needed to upgrade to the professional version of this virus immediately if there was to be any hope that the sun would rise again in the morning. It was plainly a very serious concern.
I ran my actual virus protection program, Avira AntiVir, which, though it had somehow failed to notice or prevent this infection on its way in, managed to spot it now (presumably with some small, digital simulation of embarrassment), and cleaned up some of it. I then updated and ran Spybot Search & Destroy, which got a few more elements of the infection out of there. Then I was able to activate MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (which the virus had previously prevented from executing), and was able to update and run it. It got the rest of the virus stuff, though to this day I have not been able to get rid of the Firefox redirect bullshit that it saddled me with.
The whole process took around six hours. Six hours of my life which I really would have preferred to be doing something else with. It was plainly time to get serious.
I had to deal with the redirect business; if I couldn’t stop it, I could at least make certain that WHEN it redirected me to virus-friendly pages against my will, I could prevent it from running scripts there that would re-infect me. I installed the wonderful Web of Trust plugin for Firefox, which allows you to rate the trustworthiness of sites along several different axes, and then share those ratings with other users. All of the sites the virus tried to redirect me to were rated very low by other users, and so the plugin stopped them from loading properly and thus causing any further harm. I am more than happy to give the lowest possible rating on every axis to ANYTHING the virus redirects me to, just for good measure. Ad-Block Plus also helped, in that it kept popups at bay, with all of their nastiness, and another plugin prevents any flash content from running without my say-so as well (which is a little annoying when visiting YouTube, since I have to manually approve each video before I can watch it, but I’ve come to accept this as necessary).
I got a program called Peer Block, which prevents other computers from peeking into your computer and mucking about, and got a pretty comprehensive list of known cyber-voyeurs. For the first day or so, I watched with horrified wonder as the program reported, about once every two seconds, some computer somewhere in the world which was blocked from its attempt to get in and have a look around in my computer. It was a moment not unlike that which is experienced when one shines an ultra-violet light around a seemingly-pristine hotel room and sees the organic waste and detritus apparently coating every available surface. The horror of knowing that this had been going on, right beneath my nose, and was happening to everyone else, every moment, was palpable. I set the program to run as soon as Windows was opened and to update automatically every day. It’s now a fixture.
I finally got around to getting the professional version of MalwareBytes AntiMalware, which, though a robust and effective tool in its free form, would not provide active and constant protection unless you got the paid version. This single step seems to have been the most significant step in my protection routine. I set it to automatically update and then perform a full scan every morning while I’m at work. A number of small and recurring problems ( such as the previously DAILY problem wherein my computer would suddenly lose the ability to play video and sound files until I rebooted, which has now vanished) which I had been suffering from for weeks went away for good the moment I did so, and I curse myself for not shelling out the $27 for it ages ago.
I make a point of updating Spybot Search & Destroy every day now, and run a full scan every three days. I also make use, after every update, of its “immunize” feature, which theoretically protects your web browsers against known threats proactively. Avira AntiVir, in spite of its deficciencies, remains a last line of defense, and one which still occasionally catches things the others miss. It gets an automatic update every day and a full scan weekly as well.
Auslogics BoostSpeed, which I’ve had the paid version of for some time now, but which I have not, until recently, made adequate use of, is getting regular work, cleaning up and defragmenting my registry, which is always a key target for malware. It has a small but simple protection suite which I also make use of, just in case.
In order to frustrate Bot Herders which routinely try to co-opt my computer into their bot nets (a problem which had been plaguing me for some time), I now tell my e-mail program to “forget” my password every day before I shut it down, so that even if a bot herder breaks through my multiple lines of defense and starts up my e-mail program (always a possibility), it will have no ability to actually connect with my e-mail server anymore. Where automated spam e-mail generators are concerned, I am at the very least no longer a part of the problem.
My next step is to get something more robust than Windows’s built-in firewall program. I’ve herd Zone Alarm spoken of warmly, though I’m still shopping around.
So, what about you folks? What do you do to protect yourselves, and what do you suggest? I’m a relative newcomer to this level of security-mindedness, and I’m keen for some discussion.
I was out in my living room, playing my Playstation 3 for a few hours. I had left my computer running, as I am wont to do, but there were no programs active aside from my e-mail program, Eudora. When I got back to my room, I saw several new windows on my desktop, all of them posing as an anti-virus program which I knew I did not own, and which I immediately realized was the latest iteration of a long legacy of particularly noxious trojan viruses. It advised me in frantic tones that my computer was infected with tens, if not hundreds of thousands of serious and life-threatening viruses, and I needed to upgrade to the professional version of this virus immediately if there was to be any hope that the sun would rise again in the morning. It was plainly a very serious concern.
I ran my actual virus protection program, Avira AntiVir, which, though it had somehow failed to notice or prevent this infection on its way in, managed to spot it now (presumably with some small, digital simulation of embarrassment), and cleaned up some of it. I then updated and ran Spybot Search & Destroy, which got a few more elements of the infection out of there. Then I was able to activate MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (which the virus had previously prevented from executing), and was able to update and run it. It got the rest of the virus stuff, though to this day I have not been able to get rid of the Firefox redirect bullshit that it saddled me with.
The whole process took around six hours. Six hours of my life which I really would have preferred to be doing something else with. It was plainly time to get serious.
I had to deal with the redirect business; if I couldn’t stop it, I could at least make certain that WHEN it redirected me to virus-friendly pages against my will, I could prevent it from running scripts there that would re-infect me. I installed the wonderful Web of Trust plugin for Firefox, which allows you to rate the trustworthiness of sites along several different axes, and then share those ratings with other users. All of the sites the virus tried to redirect me to were rated very low by other users, and so the plugin stopped them from loading properly and thus causing any further harm. I am more than happy to give the lowest possible rating on every axis to ANYTHING the virus redirects me to, just for good measure. Ad-Block Plus also helped, in that it kept popups at bay, with all of their nastiness, and another plugin prevents any flash content from running without my say-so as well (which is a little annoying when visiting YouTube, since I have to manually approve each video before I can watch it, but I’ve come to accept this as necessary).
I got a program called Peer Block, which prevents other computers from peeking into your computer and mucking about, and got a pretty comprehensive list of known cyber-voyeurs. For the first day or so, I watched with horrified wonder as the program reported, about once every two seconds, some computer somewhere in the world which was blocked from its attempt to get in and have a look around in my computer. It was a moment not unlike that which is experienced when one shines an ultra-violet light around a seemingly-pristine hotel room and sees the organic waste and detritus apparently coating every available surface. The horror of knowing that this had been going on, right beneath my nose, and was happening to everyone else, every moment, was palpable. I set the program to run as soon as Windows was opened and to update automatically every day. It’s now a fixture.
I finally got around to getting the professional version of MalwareBytes AntiMalware, which, though a robust and effective tool in its free form, would not provide active and constant protection unless you got the paid version. This single step seems to have been the most significant step in my protection routine. I set it to automatically update and then perform a full scan every morning while I’m at work. A number of small and recurring problems ( such as the previously DAILY problem wherein my computer would suddenly lose the ability to play video and sound files until I rebooted, which has now vanished) which I had been suffering from for weeks went away for good the moment I did so, and I curse myself for not shelling out the $27 for it ages ago.
I make a point of updating Spybot Search & Destroy every day now, and run a full scan every three days. I also make use, after every update, of its “immunize” feature, which theoretically protects your web browsers against known threats proactively. Avira AntiVir, in spite of its deficciencies, remains a last line of defense, and one which still occasionally catches things the others miss. It gets an automatic update every day and a full scan weekly as well.
Auslogics BoostSpeed, which I’ve had the paid version of for some time now, but which I have not, until recently, made adequate use of, is getting regular work, cleaning up and defragmenting my registry, which is always a key target for malware. It has a small but simple protection suite which I also make use of, just in case.
In order to frustrate Bot Herders which routinely try to co-opt my computer into their bot nets (a problem which had been plaguing me for some time), I now tell my e-mail program to “forget” my password every day before I shut it down, so that even if a bot herder breaks through my multiple lines of defense and starts up my e-mail program (always a possibility), it will have no ability to actually connect with my e-mail server anymore. Where automated spam e-mail generators are concerned, I am at the very least no longer a part of the problem.
My next step is to get something more robust than Windows’s built-in firewall program. I’ve herd Zone Alarm spoken of warmly, though I’m still shopping around.
So, what about you folks? What do you do to protect yourselves, and what do you suggest? I’m a relative newcomer to this level of security-mindedness, and I’m keen for some discussion.