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Most Home PC Users Lack Security
Ant writes "CNET News.com and MSNBC report that a survey of home personal computer (P.C.) users found 81 percent lacked at least one of three critical types of security. However, the number of consumers using firewalls and updated antivirus software is improving, according to a report released Wednesday. The vast majority of consumers surveyed were found to lack at least one of three types of critical security--a firewall, updated antivirus software or anti-spyware protection, according to a report by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance. Of this group, 56 percent had no antivirus software, or had not updated it within a week, while 44 percent did not have a firewall properly configured, according to the report. Meanwhile, 38 percent of survey respondents lacked spyware protection..."
Whatya mean? I got my blanket right here...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
After witnessing how easily most consumer firewalls were abused by Sony's DRM I'd say that firewalls are no longer an indicator of computer security. At least on the Windows platform.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Yeah, since they care more about podcasting than rootkits, what did you expect...
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
Other findings include: Sky is blue. Water is wet.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
They're missing the most important type of security; a browser which is not Internet Explorer.
I thought most of us slashdotters were taking care of our home PCs... and mom's... and dad's... and grandma's...
The sun rose this morning.
How could this possibly be considered "news worthy"?
Personal Computer? So that's what PC means. Go figure
Your survey is useless. Have a cookie.
And what about their PCs?
Yes, I know I can google this - no shit. However, interested in the opinions here. I'm tired of paying for Norton A/V, so what's the best freeware A/V scanner for Windows? Shell/app integration is not needed, just a standalone app with good and frequent def updates would be nice.
xoxo,
boomgopher
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
"Well Duhhhh!!!!!" category?
Patrick
The worst part of being athiest.... You don't have anyone to talk to during orgasm!
National Cyber Security Alliance? Couldn't they at least have picked a different acronym than one that's been used in the computer field for a really long time?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
This survey brought to you by the Department of the Obvious. Please read our other surveys "Water is wet" and "Ice is cold".
We KNOW home users don't have security. Windows has been brought kicking and screaming from a single user insulated space into the big wide internet world.
Home computing has evolved just like personal motoring has.
Seat belts and safety features in cars used to be an addon luxury that not many people had or used, now every car comes with them and airbags and strengthening supports as standard.
Spyware protection is a new tact, and should really be dealt with in the same malicious software category viruses fall into - it basically uses the same engine, and its only the AV companies themselves who made a distinguisher between installed with vague permission and none whatsoever.
liqbase
I lack any spyware or real virus scanning (though rkhunter is applied occasionally), I guess that puts my Linux PC at a huge risk and makes me another dumb user statistic.
That isn't a good sign that security is improving, it is just a sign that people have gotten so used to Windows that they think needing anti-virus software is perfectly reasonable and normal. Better security would mean less people NEED such tools because they aren't running Windows.
Everyone gets mad at Microsoft for bundling more products together, but it's obvious most people are too lazy/uneducated to install this type of s/w.
I do not have Windows though (at home).
I'm not connected to the internet.
I have a Linux box. I install software by downloading them
from work, and getting the tarballs back home on a flash
drive. I use Sorcerer Linux, which has a very good dependancy
system, so I don't always go back and forth for missing
software.
Atypical, I grant you...
(and, for the pedants out there: yes, I know I am not as
secure as an NSA computer, someone can get into my home and
nick my machine, yeah, but Sony's rootkit can always try and
get me, fat chance).
By those metrics, Linux, BSD, OSX, well anything that isn't Microsoft is an insecure platform...
Antivirus, antispyware ? What do you mean ? Is that only in the New Oxford American Dictionary ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
You shouldn't need an external firewall to protect your machine from hostile incoming connections -- your machine shouldn't be listening on ports it doesn't need to, and when it does listen, it shouldn't be possible for incoming connections to subvert it. You shouldn't need add-on antivirus software -- your machine should have a basic "immune system" of its own and shouldn't be vulnerable to the effects of running untrusted external code.
It is possible to design operating systems that are inherently secure in these ways. One of the larger crimes committed by the designers of the currently-popular consumer-grade operating systems is to have convinced large swaths of the population, via ubiquitous, crashing mediocrity, that it's somehow an "impossible" problem. It was largely a solved problem 20 years ago, if anyone had listened.
Normal computer users shouldn't have to cope with all this stuff.
Why should they need a firewall? The OS simply shouldn't have dozens of unneeded services that listen on the network on by default.
The sad fact is that the OS most people are using lacks basic security out of the box. Acting as if it was the users falt won't make this simple fact go away.
This is a good site to check your relative security: http://www.speedguide.net/scan.php They also have a speed test if you are curious what your actual download speeds are. Try it several times to get an average. The time of day definitely makes a difference!
I run Gentoo GNU/Linux and I do not run a firewall, or have virus or spyware protection. But, I have few open ports that can be jacked with, so the firewall is unnecessary. Viruses can't do much. I run my programs (email, browser, etc.) as a regular user so if a malicious program managed to execute it wouldn't be able to do much to the system. Same goes for the system servers that run as 'nobody'. Spyware is not a problem with free software because malicious source code will not easily get into my distribution. Thanks Gentoo!
The multi-billion $ Windows security industry makes me laugh. It is purely the result of bad operating system design.
an ill wind that blows no good
....water is wet.
Common sense and a bit of understanding are for more important. I've never, in my 15 years of computing, had a virus. They really aren't THAT hard to get. Most mom&pops don't get viruses, they get adware trojan horses, and virus protection doesn't really help there. Most systems don't have that many open ports, and lots of people have a NAT type firewall even if they don't know it.
...windows... don't run as administrator all the time. Then it will become mostly moot.
I really hope that these tools are band-aids that go away in a few years once systems like IE don't have so many vulnerabilities, and once the most popular OSs
(I used the word "most" a lot in there)
Unless they included "what operating system are you running" as a question, the metrics are slightly skewed.
Mac and Linux users obviously should still have a hardware firewall, but anti-virus and anti-malware scanners? Don't need them (yet, anyway).
Frankly this subject has been one of the biggest problems I've had to deal wit hback when I was the service manager at a computer store that serviced retail users. The complete and utter lack of security. This fell into three catagories:
Lack of Anti-Virus
Most of the time I tried to hammer it into thier heads that spending $40 now would save them a ton of heartache later. If I was EXTREMLY lucky, I could persuade them to go out and buy the software from Staples, bring it back to us, and we'd install it on thier new machine before it ever left our store and it's own defenses. Most of the time however I'd install the trial version of norton or mcafee, inform them that THEY MUST get the full version before the trial period is over, and STILL see the goddamn thing within two months, loaded with enough viruses to call it the PC version of Typhoid Mary.
The part that sucked was that inspite of a verbal warning, a piece of paper taped to the computer and the monitor warning them that they NEED anti-virus programs, they still came to me with "Well why the @#$% didn't you tell me about this?"
Firewall
Actually this is no longer as much of a problem as it used to be now that we're seeing broadband and multiple computers in a house becoming the norm. We used to sell Linksys routers and that became a strong defense. Myself personally I run Norton Internet Security behind my Symantec Firewall/VPN appliance for a two pronged defense and so far I've yet to be broken into (although I've logged a ton of port sniffing attack attempts).
The third problem is Spyware.
At least this one is easy to fix. I usually install Spyware Doctor on the system that came into my shop and clean out the system (then uninstalling it unless the customer wanted to buy a license from PC Tools), then I'd install the free programs out there (Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy) to protect them in the future.
Spyware has never been too much of an issue for my customers because I could install a free program and if they ever had a problem I could talk them through the programs over the phone. For the most part that was all they needed so it wasn't too bad of a problem.
It's nice to see that more and more people are getting concerned about security. Just a little effort and a small investment and your computer can be safe with a minimum of fuss.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Amazing... now who was surveyed? Are Linux and Mac users concerned by the survey? Or they aren't worthy of the title "home PC users"? That's like 10% of the home PC userbase that would probably answer "no" to all three types of security. But wait, the report is carried by MSNBC ? Ah, all makes sense now.
Bah, methinks the whole article is shameless self-promotion, marketing bullsh*t if you will:
The improvements were attributed to the default firewall that is installed with Windows XP Service Pack 2, according to the survey.
... which has a free home edition.
Starmen.net
When you purchase a PC, you should have the option of installing freeware that might help you in the incessant barrage of spam, viruses, spyware, adware, bots and phishing emails. It might also help to have a short tutorial on how your PC becomes infected/compromised/used to propogate malicious code. Maybe then Windows would be a better and safer O/S?
d ucts/znalm/freeDownload.jsp (Zone Alarm firewall)
a milyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displa ylang=en (MS Anti-Spyware adware/spyware detection)
For those who need some free help:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5 (AVG anti virus)
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/pro
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ (Ad-Aware adware/spyware detection)
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ (SpyBot S&D adware/spyware detection)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
A client of mine recently bought some new, relatively-fast (albeit Celeron) laptops. They have Windows XP SP2 (with firewall) but came also with a Symantec anti-virus product which also has its own firewall. They have subsequently installed the Microsoft anti-spyware software. That's a lot of software which not only has to intercept and check the "useful" software on the machine but also find time and bandwidth to update itself.
The machines run like dogs, slower than the 300Mhz machine I have which happily runs Windows 2K - without virus scanners, firewalls and assorted software. And the firewall product (redundant with SP2) is active even when it's turned off, preventing filesharing from working.
A relative has a kiddie-safe product which acts as a web proxy as well as the antivirus and anti-spyware products: it takes about 20 minutes for his machine to become usable after it is rebooted because of the various startup activities of these "security" products. You can hardly coax Office into life once the 20 minutes have passed.
The malware/firewall approach to computer security is simply broken - it slows the machine down and stops things (like networking) working in ways that the average user will simply be at a loss to fix.
I wouldn't advise anyone with a clue about computers to use anti-virus software and for those without a clue, it's a heavy price to pay in resource terms.
Unfortunately, the science of Operating Systems has mainly stagnated since the 1960s and building computer systems for the networked world needs a radically different approach.
A no-bid contract has been awarded to Haliburton to develop and distribute software to combat "Internet insurgency." Company spokesman I.P. Freely says we should expect to see finished products sometime in 2017, but that the Department of Homeland Security has been commissioned to prevent further discussion on this matter, as "Osama Bin Laden might be listening."
I wonder how much of this drop in computers without antivirus updates is caused by the user, and how much is caused by ISPs or vendors setting up or demanding it before users can access the internet.
I also wonder where they got these people. Are they all AOL users? Were they selected "randomly" online? If so from where... my "random" selection of internet users from slashdot show interesting different results.
lol: You see no door there!
But I don't use anti-virus software. They slow down my system, eat too much memory, are reactive rather than proactive, are nothing more than glorified versions of grep, and in general are only useful as a second line of defense. So I guess that by this articles criteria, I'm not "secure". Oh well.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
O RLY?
56% + 44% +38% = 138%, I can't believe anything else this article has to say, they can't even do simple math.
Many people, and that includes me, can do perfectly well without a firewall, anti-spyware or anti-virus. These are hardly indicators of "security".
It's much more useful to think twice before opening weird emails or installing crappy software.
Did they include the people using Norton/Symantec stuff in the protected or unprotected category?
lol no its not a virus
In other news, the sky is blue and it has been discovered that a long line of Popes have been Catholic
Teenagers. The worst people that can just make a pc worse. They just love them stupid smilies that they download, and they don't even know what spyware is. They also, download viruses from IM's, since they are the most used communications at that age range.
I agree. Consumer anti-virus,firewalls, and anti-spyware are not a good metric of security. Most people can't stand blocking and unblocking programs for their outgoing firewall all day. And really, the average consumer doesn't know what's safe and unsafe. Incoming protection is pretty pointless too since so many computers are behind a nat router. Anti-virus provides protection for old viruses, but the 0-day mass speading ones generally beat anti-virus anyway. Anti-virus provides retroactive protection of viruses already written. It doesn't generally provide a means of stopping a suspected virus. I've seen some that can, but the general home user anti-virus doesn't or requires training from users not skilled enough to train it. On top of that, there's so much political bullshit that goes on within the ranks that something could be malicious to your computer, but the supplying company complained it was legit and they let it through anyway. Also! They generally provide little/no spyware protection. So you've got a bloated piece of crap anti virus program that slows down your computer almost as much as the virus itself that doesn't really work all that well.
The only retroactive solution I think is worthwhile these days is spyware scanning your box once a week. And rotate which scanner you use.
On the other hand, there is A LOT you can do not to get spyware and viruses in the first place. First, DON'T USE IE. All the fanboys will cry foul here, but it's true. I don't care if alternative browsers are just as hackable but they aren't being exploited blah blah blah... We'll cross that river when we get to it. For now, using almost anything besides IE will stop the bulk of your spyware. Also, in whatever browser you use, don't allow in browser media to be played. Flash, movies, music, etc etc. Or at the very least, make sure it prompts you first so you have the choice to only do so from websites you trust. Also, don't go to sketch sites. Plain and simple. Let's see... don't use outlook, EVER. In your MUA make sure it it either doesn't display html or prompts you to do so. Don't open attachments. It's stupid. It's so incredibly easy to spoof who you are via email that you can really never fully trust an email. Don't use AIM. There are AIM viruses left and right nowadays. Use an alternative like gaim or trillion and never accept to transfer files.
More than anything, just be smart about where you go and what you do. Understand that the internet really isn't a safe place. Security isn't a product, it's a process. I can't stress this enough. Doing certain things yourself will keep you safer than any anti-virus ever could.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
... because they are using Windows. Period.
Most home PC users don't know what a firewall is much less hot to properly configure one. Most home useres think that just having a virus scan and anti-spyware software is enough they don't think about updating. This will for the most part never change as people will not compel themselves to learn about security on their own.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
It seems misleading to me that the users with no anti-virus and those that had not updated in over a week are lumped into the same category. Sure the former are still susceptible to a lot of virus attacks as new ones come out, but in the end there are A LOT of old viruses still floating around. Having some protection against those seems better than none at all to me.
Maybe I am just naive...that would explain why I got into this industry in the first place...
So THAT'S what P.C. means
I wonder how many people responded that they had met NONE of the 3 criteria?
My parents would have.
VOTE!
Here's a file a for you. No it's not a virus LOL.
Home computer security tools are a mess. Settings are not only obtuse they are optional. Unless you do a lot of homework to understand what some settings do users will often ignore warnings and settings just to get their computer to stop pestering them.
Why are these things optional? Very few use the exploits found all over XP in constructive way so why ask "Do you want to do this?" Why are warnings obscure and scary? A user doesn't like a little yellow flashing shield in their window. They will like it even less when the user clicks on it and are bombarded with techno-babble. Both of these things conspire to make users chose the wrong things. Especially when hackers provide a seemingly pleasant alternative.
These things don't have to be engineered this way and yet we continue to march down this road in XP.
I think that the questions are skewed to make things appear worse than they are, presumably because the survey is done by AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance, who presumably have an interest in scaring people into their products and services. Aside from the obvious Linux/Mac issues described by other posters, "properly configured" firewall is a pretty strong definition and I expect many quite adequate firewalls could be classified as "improperly configured" even though they were effective against the bulk of the current attacks. Similarly, only counting anti-virus software if it has been updated in the last week is going to skew things- there is a big difference between having no AV at all and having AV that is running but has definitions that are two weeks or a month old, and the metric chosen groups those two cases together.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
On my PC, I do not have anti-virus software or anti-spyware software running. Neither do I run a firewall to give false security (I am behind a NAT router though).
I would fail the test, but still never be a victim, like most of the people with the crap installed. I have installed common sense in the user of the machine (myself), and it is the best defence, and it even works against most zer0-day exploits.
I use the following devices in "out of the box/default" configuration :
- 1 computer running Mac OS X
- 1 computer running Ubuntu Linux
- 1 ISP-provided router/NAT box
I have software update on a weekly (Mac) or daily (Ubuntu) basis. I have two levels of firewalling. I always run as simple user and my passwork is asked whenever I need root/admin privileges.
So yes, I believe that the problem has been solved for the home user !
Ceci n'est pas une signature
There's a simple (not necessarily true!) explanation of why "currently-popular consumer-grade operating systems" tend not to be "inherently secure" in those ways - the software companies want to be able to sell security software.
The article is kind of wrong. Isntead of saying that users lack security, it should rather say that they lack brain. I can agree that a firewall is a goo dthing, but I never used any anti-virus software and I never had a virus on my machine. The only tim this happened, was when I debugged a virus and I accidently started it. Usually I take care when I debug a virus, but I pressed the wrong key in this case. Apart from that I never found a virus when I scanned my system, and I certainly not avoided 'those' sites, where you are supposed to be swamped by them. I'm also 24 hours a day online and still this was not enough to install an exploit or a virus.
Which raises the question for me, why do I not get a virus while so many others do? Is the only reason, that I don't click on everything that my email allows me to click on?
Many people are afriad of terrorism, crime, immagrants, but seem blase about one type of social menace that's not just a possible but very probable.
If you're not very careful about security your box will be compromised, and whilst, okay, it's not quite in the same league as being killed, it can create huge problems.
A little public paranioa in this area might not be too much of a bad thing.
I would say that anti-spyware is much more important than anti-virus.
It's "pwned" or "0wned", not "p0wned".
What I was wondering (just yesterday actually) was how good home Wifi is.
I mean, I know (from wardriving) that few have any security enabled on their APs. I also know that even enabling it really doesn't do much other than hopefully make your neighbor look like a better target.
But for those with WEP enable. I wonder how often people change there key or ssid or anything that may help even a little.
Once I have a better warrig set up, I plan to map a small area (lots of APs near my house)then remap it in incriments (maybe weekly) and see what, if any, changes are made to existing APs.
...No shit, Sherlock!
from the news-at-eleven dept.
Bug writes "CNN and Al Jazerra reported in a joint statement that a survey of slashdot articles found that 81% of them lacked at least on of the three critical contents of a newsworthy report. However, the number of dupes has been recently improving, according to a report released yesterday."
Ok, really. Everyone with even the slightest interest in computer security knows that there's not much that's easier than taking over a dozen or so home PCs. Why else, do you think, do prices for botnets range in the cents-per-machine range? Because it takes maybe one cent of effort to break into the average home machine, otherwise those selling the botnets wouldn't be turning a profit. It's probably more expensive keeping other botnet harvesters out than getting in in the first place.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Went with AntiVir for now. AVG seemed nice as well, but apparently insists on running a background process/service when I manually scan a file. AntiVir would fully exit (though seems just a tad slower).
kthxbye,
boomgopher
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Like I'm sure many other people on Slashdot, I get asked by friends and family (and even friends of friends or family) to help fix problems on their computers. I was happy to do this for a while, but it started getting annoying when people would phone me up during the middle of the working day with problems, or wouldn't take my advice but still expected me to help them when things went wrong.
But now I have a solution - move to Apple Mac, and then tell people you can't support them unless they use Mac because you don't use a PC any more. The great thing is, those people that do move to Mac rarely bug you because they don't get viruses and stupid problems any more! I recommend it as a great method to stop those annoying telephone calls without upsetting anyone and without needing to feel guilty.
- Mike Newhall
mike@newhall.net
http://www.newhall.net/
Installing AOL will fix all of your computer problems. Really. I saw it on a commercial.
However, I wonder how they count a 'naked' Linux/BSD/Apple machine? Since it typically doesn't need any of the mentioned security add-ons.
Oh well, what the hell...
I had another client this week whose PC was infested with spyware and viruses. Took me HOURS just to get it working *somewhat* normal. (Of course, he was using a pirated version of XP, so I couldn't do the easy thing and just re-install.....) The idiot hooked his PC up to a cable modem with NO anti-virus or spyware protection. We all know that PCs are hit within minutes of connecting to a high speed line. I've never seen so many instances of a virus in my life. And the spyware he had was NASTY. I hope some day to meet the guy who developed SurfSideKick so I can kick him in the balls repeatedly. (if you are reading this you bastard, I hope you meet a painful death very soon)
Anyway, I'd say 95% of my PC clients have problems with spyware. They have no clue what it is or what to do about it. I think these ISPs should do a better job of educating these people when they sign up. They should also install spyware/virus firewalls. Hell, we have no problems at my office with that kind of thing.
Cheap pr0n!
I think the approach to how windows is architected is to blame for its security woes to a larger extent than 'bad' programmers. The windows way seems to be 'black box' or monolithic in its approach. Within its walls, a program has a pretty good chance at getting around where its shouldn't be able to go, even amongst threads it seems. The Unix way seems to be environment oriented - a collection of independant tools that can work together, but have their own lives apart from each others. Windows seems like a fortress (in its design, not how secure it ends up being) in that once inside the walls, one is more free to roam. Unixes seem like a city with internal security like police and homes with functional locks on the doors.
That, and what seems to be the constant push at MS for convenience over good design. As long as the corporate culture at MS follows the convenience/citidel way of building operating systems, they're going to have nothing but troubles with respect to security.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I'm not sure there's that much of a difference.
Pattern-based antivirus software is reactive, and that's one of the reasons it doesn't work very well.
A well-engineered virus exploiting a brand-new vulnerability can spread very, very fast. If (say) 90% of users are running antivirus software that hasn't been updated in two days or more, a new virus can (and will) have devastating effect.
If you're going to base your security in any large part on reactive antivirus software, you really do have to keep it religiously up-to-date, on a daily or even hourly basis. Otherwise you're basing your security on a race between the spread of a new virus and the spread of the new rules to detect it, and that's a race you're going to lose sooner or later.
I've used ClamAV (and Clamwin), AVG, Avast, AntiVir and Norton and McAfee.
d -Free-Products.html
None of them come even close to BitDefender when it comes to Windows. Its free (and there's a linux version) - but only for home use. I'm trying to get them to pay for it at work - McAfee sucks.
Anyway, give it a go. I seem to remember it got 100% a few weeks back on Slashdot, I tried it and I'd never go back to AVG*.
http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Main/view/Downloa
It's probably the best AV out there - well, apart from ClamAV - because its a beauty to work with on a mail server.
* Just like I didn't go back to ZoneAlarm when I found out about SyGate.
If you ever have to download unsigned files (and most people do), I'd AT LEAST have a proxy with ClamAV installed.
Even for the knowledgable, it is wreckless not to use some measure of protection on a habitually-exploited system.
I run mostly windows at home, 2000 for myself & 98 for the kids. I use ipcop as a firewall, and no antivirus or spyware, I even run 2000 as admin because I'm lazy like that. The kids are too young to be surfing, and when they're old enough I'll probably move them to something like edubuntu. My wife & I don't open crap in email, and we don't use IE for browsing. Every six months or so I do an online virus scan just for the heck of it - never had a problem. You really don't need to run all that crap all the time if you use a modicum of sense, which I know is sadly lacking in much of the population.
For MS-Win users, the real issue is _NOT_ presence or lack of these additional software products. The first and most important step is privilige isolation: STOP RUNNING WITH ADMIN PRIVS! Second comes understanding your sw and not using it dangerously. For MS-IE or MS-Outlook, that means not using it at all. Third, is keeping your system patched. MS-WIndows Update doesn't do a horrible job.
There's really no excuse for "experts" (drips under pressure) not to know. The NIST has some nice recommendations for MS-WinXP, easily installed as registry updates.
So people aren't using the Windows Firewall? It's included so it's gotta be great. Microsoft will even install it for you. Sorry Mac and Linux users, not Windows Firewall for you...
I guess that's why I could quit my IT job and bring in twice the dough removing spyware from people's computers. Now I'm going to say something extremely controversial that many of you people here will not like. The cause of 97% of these spyware infections is surfing internet pr0n. It's true. We don't like to admit it, but somehow we just lose our regular reasoning senses when we start "surfing w/ one hand" if you know what I mean. You probably wouldn't click on that suspicious looking link, but damnit, you've never seen that done with a barnyard chicken before and you're curious! Additionally, no one is going to talk because no one wants to admit that they accidently installed a keylogger when they clicked on a link to "dirty lesbians lick each other's brown-rings". Therefore, all of our spyware becomes our dirty little secret of personal computing insecurity. Therefore, I say, ban ALL internet pr0n and the problem will take care of itself!
It was largely a solved problem 20 years ago, if anyone had listened.
If you're talking about Vaxen et al....those computers sucked.
They didn't have IM, they didn't have IE, they didn't play games over UDP. As far as the modern day consumer is concerned, there was not a single useful application on them.
It simply isn't fair to expect modern machines to hold up to the standards of security that their simpler predecessors did. My pocket calculator is also immune to viruses and trojans (although I'll bet the HP 48-SX was vulnerable to IR-port worms).
Now that's not to say they couldn't be doing a better job. OS X is a great example of how asking for the admin password every time a modification of the central system is requested makes worms all but impossible and trojans much more difficult.
But it drives me up a wall when people expect more complex systems to be as easy to write and debug as simpler ones. Security gets harder as complexity increases, it's about as fundamental a law to computers as thermodynamics is to physics.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My windows PC is behind the default Linksys cable router firewall. I only use the internet on this machine for streaming audio via Winamp. I never use the web browser or email programs. All my email, web browsing, and downloading is done on another linux PC. Am I reasonably safe?
So, with such crappy options, I just don't run any anti-virus. But that doesn't make my PC insecure -- it's probably safer that 95% of all PCs out there that are running Norton/McAffee/whatever.
If you know how to actually use the computer securely, you won't get viruses. A proper firewall (hardware/NAT, XP SP2, software firewall) and a secure browser/email client with the right settings will keep viruses out. I can't remember the last time I had one.
When the Fear mechanism is activated, particularly when there is no actual critical event occurring, (like running from a tiger), for which the fear drug pumping through our veins is preparing us to deal with. . , when we buy into the fear and there is no release, we end up in a perpetual state where we are much more open to certain suggestions which lack rational grounding.
"We're going to take your rights away and allow police searches in your living room. Okay? Terrorists! Viruses! Crackheads with guns!"
As has been pointed out, it's interesting that this story comes from MSNBC.
As an aside. . . My computer runs clean and sweet with just a simple little fire-wall. (And what an overly dramatic name is 'Firewall' for a program which asks me if I want to allow things access to my modem). I don't need any of that other junk; Virus scanners are for people who run Windows 2K and up and who open email attachments, which I don't. And Anti-Spyware is for people who run Kazaa and Google tool bars and other nonsense programs.
I mean, come on.
The Voice of Authority telling us that we home users need to run around like panicking headless chickens looking for 'security' on our writing desks?
Silly.
-FL
It works as well as Norton, without fucking up my computer. I will never use Norton again.
Teenagers. The worst people that can just make a pc worse.
How true. Just this past Monday I spent four hours at the home of a client with two teenage daughters who will apparently download and run ANYTHING.
MS AntiSpyware found about 100 pieces of malware on their PC, including four or five nasty trojans and a couple password stealers, all of which had been operating with impunity for God knows how long. Norton Antivirus 2003 was loaded on the machine. Not only was it expired, but the realtime protection had been shut off. MS AntiSpyware didn't remove everything, either, there was a trojan that kept trying to reinstall itself, and there was at least one other thing that went undetected but was successfully thwarting my attempts to install updated antivirus software until I dropped into msconfig and disabled everything in the Startup. I left it running a full scan, because I wasn't about to sit for another hour or two just watching it work.
The worst part is, in a couple weeks it will probably be right back to the way it was when I started, because the habits of the people using it remain the same. I already prepared the client for that and told him he'd be better off just buying a new PC (the one in question is two years old, and for what he paid me to clean it he already could have bought a decent new one).
Cleaning spyware off a Windows PC is about as much fun as cleaning a dirty toilet with a toothbrush-- but at least with the toilet you know that you've gotten everything when you're finished. The only way to be sure with Windows is to nuke the machine and reinstall everything. Every spyware call I get makes me appreciate my Macs even more.
I believe that the ISP's could do more to protect their users.
At least here in the UK there is a trend for ISP's to bundle USB DSL Adapters with their packages. These devices require that the computer they connect to use the public IP address instead of allowing the host computer to run from a private NAT address. Exposing the computers real public IP address puts the responsibility on the user to install and maintain firewall software. Needless to say many don't know how to do this or simply allow their security software subscriptions to laps.
The argument for this practice this is that many home users do not have Ethernet ports making Ethernet based NAT, Firewalled routers harder to support as the user will have to install a NIC card. This may have had some truth 6 years ago when broadband first appeared in the UK and it was mandated by the incumbent Telco which USB modem must be supplied with the service.
These days every PC and Laptop sold has at least an Ethernet port and in many cases WIFI as well, some routers also support USB. This means the only reason to continue this practice is cost saving.
USB Adapters are less expensive to give away than routers, if an ISP doesn't bundle connection equipment they fear loosing customers to their competitors.
I feel this is a false economy. NAT routers are not much more expensive than USB Adapters and from a support point of view are easier to set up now that Ethernet ports are common place. You just have to pre-configure the router with the customers log-in details and enable DHCP. Pretty much the only thing the customer has to do is plug it in. No drivers need to be installed and updated. Running behind NAT now means that it's a lot less unlikely a malicious attacker can take over a customers PC. Which makes everybodys life easier.
You haven't had a virus infection in 15 years? On any computer you've used? I find that hard to believe. Or do you mean that you've gotten trojans and other "non-virii" and are being overly technical? As for your statement that Most mom&pops don't get viruses, they get adware trojan horses, and virus protection doesn't really help there. Most systems don't have that many open ports, and lots of people have a NAT type firewall even if they don't know it is completely untrue. I know this from experience.
The plain fact is that those two applications have been responsible for a huge part of the personal computer security problem. If those two applications had ever paid any proactive attention to security (as opposed to all this knee-jerk, reactive, catch-up, band-aid stuff), the computer security problem would be a tenth the size it is today. Anyone who tries to deny this plain fact really isn't thinking clearly.
Yes, there would still be some problems even if those two applications had taken security seriously, or if they didn't exist. But the problems would be on a vastly different scale.
Nor is it fair to blame the users. Many of the vulnerabilities in those applications have been automatic -- the users never even had a chance to say "no", or to decline to click on "okay". And even for the remainder, where there might have been some choice, it's still not fair to blame the users. Users shouldn't be asked to decide what's "safe" and what's not. Most users will click on "okay" most of the time. Even intelligent, responsible users will occasionally click on "okay" by accident, when they didn't mean to. The punishment for a single accidental mouse click should not be that you have to reformat your hard drive to get rid of a bunch of ineradicable malware.
Let the Flame mods begin ;-)
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Holy shit, stop the presses.
From my experience in maintaining the computers of family and friends for several years, I can say that almost none of them ever renew the "trial" anti-virus software that comes with the computer. Putting those trials on new PCs is just another way for companies to try to make a buck. They're not actually trying to protect their customers. They should instead pre-install AVG or tell a user how to get a free A/V program when they start up the computer for the first time. Overall computer security would improve, but it'll never happen because OEMs would be lighter in the pocket.
I have slight philosophical issue to shelf out money for a product, which should be protected in the first place, but will let that stand if it provides me with much needed security, but
Since the makers of security software seem in bed with "legitimate" spyware and rootkit purveyors those 40$ won't buy me shit.
I fear that save for FSecure the makers of security software have just about lost all my trust in them for this little stunt.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I've been using computers for over 13 years now. I primarily use Windows with a little bit of Linux. I've been programming for over a decade and I have administered major servers. And I have NEVER ever used ANY of these programs for any sustained amount of time. Guess that means that I just practice bad security, huh? Well...
Anti-virus: Aside from having a tendency to break a lot of things on the system and cause endless compatbility headaches, they also hamper performance significantly. And they expect you to pay them for a piece of bloated software that breaks installs and that slows your system? They also offer a false sense of security, as new worm/virus outbreaks usually run around and do a good chunk of damage before the virus signatures get added to the software. Despite going without protection, I don't get viruses. All it takes is some common sense and patching up of security holes.
Anti-spyware: I've never gotten spyware. It really isn't that hard to select no in the install options or to Google up a software product that may seem shady (not often that I'd be using such software in the first place, though) to see if there are any known spyware associated with it.
Software firewall: I am uneasy about firewalls. On one hand, I recognize that a proper firewall (i.e., hardware) is usually a good idea in an enterprise setting, but I am not so fond of this everyone-should-have-a-software-firewall craze. For one, it breaks the Internet. I can't count the number of times when I've found myself on a network that, in the name of security, block all outgoing ports except HTTP, SMTP, and all the other common ones, and me having to establish SSH tunnels to get around such restrictions in order for me to do what I want. I've even seen a DSL router whose pre-set firewall setting (if you turn the damned firewall on) blocked virtually everything (SMTP over SSL, POP over SSL, and even SSH, which means that I can't even tunnel around the damned thing). It's one thing to block incoming ports that you know you won't be listening to (e.g., 31337), but most firewalls do a lot more than that.
Of course, all this is from the perspective of an experienced computer user. I agree that for the Average Joe who doesn't know what the heck a port is and who can't tell if what they downloaded is a virus or not, such things may be worthwhile. But to make a blanket statement saying that people who throw these things aside are not security conscious is just wrong. I simply don't want to sacrifice performance and usability for what (to me personally) amounts to snake oil.
A lot of people have posted about "hey, what about Linux users". Well, face it, Linux users are a small minority. But there are quite a number Windows users who know what the difference is between a legit attachment and a viral attachment who may share the same perspective that I have on all this junk.
they would break with the "tradition" of insolance in the software industry and:
... Bill Gates' personal forture.) But he oughta cought it up anyway, the charletan! Biggest scam in the history of the world.
1) offer customers a sincere apology for their negligence
(no court seems to be able to convict them anyway, so they
should't have to worry about liability), at the same time as
2) distribute a genuinely effective set of patches to those
customers as they wait for M$ to develop a new product
3) distribute that genuinely secure product to customers FOR
FREE, with full FREE on-site support to smooth the transition
4) offer a discount on upcoming products to extend good will,
5) and eat the crow they so richly deserve.
I figure all in all it will only cost them about $100 billion bucks. (Yeah
And why is M$ held to a different standard? Because all those middle/upper-level managers who wanted to cash in on the "replace workers with machines" craze of the 90's would have to admit their greed backfired all over their damned faces, if they proposed such an ultimatum to the stockholders.
I don't have a firewall, or technically any antivirus software. I am on a win98 box and have been trouble free since I bought it new in 1999. I don't open spam and I run AdAware and Spybot monthly at least. Yet my parents computers are basically crippled at home (100 miles away) from virii and the like - they put Norton on one I finally wiped clean and got rid of everything, but it still runs like crap. So what is the solution?
Elliott Smith Tribute CD available now on Double D Records! Visit www.doubledrecords.com to order.
Actually, I was thinking about Multics. (Which I only used once, so don't worry, I'm not some die-hard Multics-worshiping zealot.)
They didn't have IM, they didn't have IE, they didn't play games over UDP...
Oh, the horror.
It simply isn't fair to expect modern machines to hold up to the standards of security that their simpler predecessors did.
Why in the world not?
Modern machines are thousands of times more powerful. Modern programming environments are hundreds of times more productive. Why should none of this power be devoted to the goal of security?
The old-school knowledge about how to design computer systems securely was not ignored by the new because it was inadequate. It was not ignored because it was thought to be inapplicable to new applications such as IM or IE or networked games. It was ignored because people didn't care or couldn't be bothered to even think about the issues.
But it drives me up a wall when people expect more complex systems to be as easy to write and debug as simpler ones. Security gets harder as complexity increases, it's about as fundamental a law to computers as thermodynamics is to physics.
Complexity is a problem, no question -- in fact it's a downright bug. It's a problem that needs to be solved, not a fact of life that has to be put up with.
This notion that complexity is somehow conserved -- analogously to the way energy is conserved in physics -- is what drives me up a wall. It's simply not true. It is possible to write simple, secure programs that solve complex problems. If you don't understand this, you're certainly not alone, but you are part of the problem.
I like to keep my Windows system as pristine and uncluttered as possible. It seems that once too many programs have been installed/uninstalled and the system gets too much use it starts to run slow. I usually reinstall Windows at least once a year to keep the performance up. This machine is primarily used for games, so the performance is needed for fast frame rates and high resolutions.
So antivirus and antispyware programs running in the background are just extra cpu cycles going to waste in my mind. I don't install junk that I find off of the internet. Well actually, sometimes I do run a keygen program or something from some crack site, and I have very rarely gotten infected with spyware, and never with a virus.
I like to use TrendMicro's Housecall to do spot checks on my system to find and clean out anything that might have gotten into it. It is nice because it doesn't get installed, it is run from the TrendMicro website right through your browser. Unfortunately you need to use IE to do the scan, but since I trust their site that isn't much of a problem.
I do use a NAT/firewall router, and I have firewall software running on this system to let me know if any rouge program of spyware is trying to phone home. This seems to work for me as I don't get crud on my computer. But as I know what I am installing and what dangers I am risking I can watch for anything suspicious. For a typical PC user I would not recommend my security setup.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
A new survey shows that trashcans smell bad and hitting your hand with a hammer causes pain.
AVG anti-virus, updated at least once a week.
Spybot updated and run at least once a week.
Ad-adware updated and run at least once a week.
Linksys firewall/router with hardware firewall, 802.11G.
128 bit encryption for wireless.
4 computers: 1 hardwired (win98SE), 3 wireless (winxp).
I've never had a breach. I don't trust software firewalls with multiple users (especially children).
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
...They assume that the default configuration, as designed by the manufacturer, is "good enough"..
No, they don't assume a thing.
The fact is, the HUGE majority don't even think about it at all. They just want to do their email, instant messaging, and download their sports scores and pr0n... simple as that. If the machine looks snazzy, it sells. People don't buy cars because of airbags and seatbelts. Most consumers, unfortunately, consider a computer an appliance, just like a toaster or a microwave.
Until they actually have a problem with it where they can't do what they want, there's no thought about it whatsoever. And they're inexpensive enough to where people are throwing their computers out in the trash rather than having the expense of getting them 'repaired'.
I've got half a workshop full of machines that have been literally put out on the street, filled with personal info and such that would be an identity thief's wet dream - that why I grab every single one I see and wipe them ASAP. They're then recycled or put into use and/or made available to those who can use them.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
A bigger problem is that 80+ percent have access to modify critical system areas,
and the ability to install new programs.
Yay! Christmas is coming and I'm making a boatload of money of these poor chumps.
Vote Quimby!
The GP wasn't referring to Vax or Unix machines of 20 years ago with regard to their simplicity. It referred to the fact that security was a solved problem on those machines. You yourself go on to say:
The thing really worth noting in your statement is that OS X uses a >20-year-old security system. It's using Unix permissions, straight from the BSD core of the system. The same BSD core used in the NeXTStep operating system a little under 20 years ago (albeit slightly upgraded since then).
Individual software packages, particularly those designed to listen for commands from the network and execute things locally (ssh, etc.) can have the sort of issues you decribe in your last paragraph; As they get more complex, the task of maintaining security does potentially also become more complex. But on an operating system level, there have been sufficient rules in effect for a long long time now. For instance, just saying "this can only be done with root privileges" and "root privileges can only be gained interactively, and on a one-shot basis" will cover a vast amount of potential issues, and is pretty much what OS X does, as you describe (albeit with slight timeouts to root privileges, rather than pure one-shot operation -- although that timeout is user-configurable).
At the end of the day, MS-DOS, QDOS, and such, left that out in the interests of expediency, size, and (maybe) end-user perceived complexity/ease-of-use. It then became a standard. I like to quote my boss on this one:
He tells me that, having worked with Unix/BSD/Vax -level machines in the late seventies, when the IBM PC came out, he and his cohorts were interested to see it. They took one look and put it down as a failure -- a joke, even -- because it lacked so much of what they saw in their current machines. Unfortunately, it became the standard, in the process setting back the state of the art by many years.
Not least is the point that Unix/Vax systems were inherently multi-user systems, and they needed a robust way of preventing one user from destroying another's data. So this was built in from the very start. MS-DOS and QDOS didn't have this capability, so the standard became that any program had full access to just about anything. The only high security implemented was in the CPU itself, where a system trap was needed to get access to 'Ring 0' (privileged) instructions. On top of this, the somewhat limited nature of the system itself led many programmers -- used to working on a more capable OS -- to make modifications to the core system, to help their stuff work. That required privileged access to the system, in order to install hooks, drivers, and so on.
Of course, once this became a standard, it was hard to change that behaviour, and it never was changed because 'backwards compatibility' was the highest goal. So when mutli-user functionality was built into Windows 9x/NT, privileged operation became the norm. People logged in as an administrator, because their programs were designed needing full access to the system, and little or no provision was made for interactive temporary privilege escalation within the OS itself. Unlike Unix/BSD, you couldn't just ask the user for an admin user & pass to get the privs needed to put some file somewhere special, and then lay down those privileges when you were done with them.
As a result, you get the horrible mess we're talking about: An IM program that can corrupt the core operating system and ultimately gain access to privileged-mode CPU cycles? WTF? A game that can modify the system kernel, or the boot sector of the hard disk? They can only do that because the system lets them, or because the system won't let them do some small operation without high privileges, and requires that the entire process runs with those privileges as a result.
-Q
Very true.
Most consumers, unfortunately, consider a computer an appliance, just like a toaster or a microwave.
Why is that unfortunate? I'd say there's nothing wrong with that at all.
Hmm, I guess I'm one of those users, considering I don't have one of the three. However, since my primary operating system isn't windows I really don't see the problem for now.
i'll bet a few bucks that all these recent viruses or spyware/adware are just created by the companies who sell the software to remove it...
nothing but a marketing scheme, just like every other problem in america... the industries and corporations are just there to provide a solution to the "problems" they have conjured.
I can't think of any modern antivirus software that leaves it up to the user to manually update the virus definitions. The best antivirus software does it silently at least once a day without having to ask anyone if it's okay, because too many people would just hit "Cancel" to get it out of the way.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The problem we run across, is somethingI explained on a Dell forum.
/etc, you're pretty much fucked during upgrades. Heaven forbid it's a major upgrade and the conf file changes enough to where you have to research what the hell is going on. I wouldn't expect mother to do that.
The dude was complaining why his PDA wasn't perfect and I explained that quality isn't as much of an issue as is quantity.
Compare OpenBSD to Windows.
OpenBSD is _far_ more secure. But in Windows I can download all kinds of nifty toys. I can even play Couter-Strike / some game here without much effort.
I truly which Microsoft or anyone else (other than the OBSD crowd) would make the reality check that we need to focus on security first now.
But the problem is when granny goes to buy a computer (or someome not informed) and see's this ultra-secure box that doesn't have flashy things, and seens this ultra-shiny loaded up with little stupid as programs that just look pretty but are loaded withadware/spyware/'bullshit you really won't need or will ever use', then they usually choose the shiny one. Especially if everything 'just works' and you can buy [pulls number out of ass] ump-teen billion books on it.
I view it as _very_ irresponsible for those who knowingly don't put security on the fore-front only becuase it costs too much money. Hell, I have a boss who just recently migrated to Windows for our software (we write robot code) and has openly told me that he doesn't care about security. It's behind a firewall, that's secure enough. It's their fault if they let anything through. Of course, their will _never_ be a reason to need to get through that firewall... _never_... uh huh... since it's windows, I can see the IT crowd finding _some_ reason to fuck with it.
I'm not just talking Windows either -- even Gentoo is a bitch to upgrade sometimes. If you modify any conf files in
"Do or do not. There is no try." -- Master Yoda (Half man, half muppet)
Ummm... did this article say the survey was carried out by America Online? How many of those people in the survey are AOHell users? *wink*
Just last week, I found a virus on my mom's computer that sent out random emails from her AOL mail account. This latest version they have out of AOL is supposed to be called SE (Security Edition). Of course they had no security over even trying to have their users maintain a tight connection that doesn't sever itself every hour, but events like these make me feel even more sour about AOL than I have in the past, and that's saying a lot.
BTW, AOL appears to just be getting into the business of "securing" its users from spyware, whereas I've been using AdAware for the last three years. Go figure.
Right from their website: "BitDefender 8 Free Edition is an on-demand virus scanner, which is best used in a system recovery or forensics role. If you are on an "always-on" Internet connection, we strongly advise you to consider using a more complex antivirus solution." Sounds like it's not quite ready for mainstream if you have a Broadband connection.... tsk tsk its the 21st century already!
When one of my best security tactics is not using mainstream products. I am starting to move towards Opera as a web browser as it has a smaller market share. Windows need to be run as a user, not administrator all the time. Which is annoying as I have not figured out the "run as" (2000) option to install things. Properly configured firewalls are beyond most users grasp.
It's fortunate that a lot of the major ISP's are offering some degree of protection to their customers. But I've found something strange. Why is it that both McAfee and Norton require that you have ActiveX enabled to download their products? I've always thought that the big names in this industry deliberately want to have security holes open so that they inflate the need for their products.
Secondly, as I indirectly work for one of these companies, I find it surprising how little attention is being given to Spyware by ISPs these days. For the most part, it's a matter of recommending a combination of Spybot and Ad-Aware. Viruses, Trojans, Worms and so on are becoming less of a (noticeable) problem. I'd really like to see a huge push against Spyware and Adware. I sometimes wish it were illegal to sell a Windows-based PC without, at least, a full year's subscription to security software or free open source alternatives. Otherwise, it's like selling someone a t-shirt with a target painted on it and going into a combined NRA-Alcholics Anonymous meeting and being surprised at the result.
Also, I wonder to what degree this survey took other OS's into account. For example, asking a Macintosh user if they have Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware software seems rather futile, for the time being.
Every QWORST DSL installation i have seen since they started using those actiontech modems DO NOT have any sort of firewall or wep/wap encryption turned on !
Is this the 'default installation policy' for qworst to completely leave everyone of their customers wide open to attack? Not to mention how much $$ they spend on wasted bandwidth.
SHAME ON QWORST !@#!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
As some other said, Clamwin is a wonderful software using an open source engine.
Although, (as they said) it doesn't have a on-access scanner (which some users find good because it's slowes down the system less and scan only when the user decided), it has a few interesting things :
- it comes with an outlook addin for scanning attachment.
- there's a firefox extension that can scan downloaded files.
- there are some POP3 proxies for other mail clients.
- most of your favorite P2P software & download managers allow to run a command after each download : you can use the function to launch clamscan/clamwin and scan files.
So clamav, even without on-access scanner, can be used to block virus at the most common entry points.
Now, all windows users need is a GAIM plugin to block "lol no its not a virus" IM worms too and will stop 99.99% worms out-there.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Just because the computer is Windows doesn't mean its insecure. However the vast majority of users who use it don't know that clicking on all those pop-ups is a bad thing or that running that .exe can do harm. Its user ignorance. I'd bet money that if you moved the majority of these people to Linux you would see a deluge of social engineering attacks that pretend to be something from the system and ask for root password that the users would gladly type in thinking its supposed to do that. As this article shows most of these people do not understand what firewals are for or how to configure them. A lot of people I've met get anvi-virus AFTER they think they've been infected thinking it will be a cure-all, then they promptly never do anything further after it finds and pulls out some viruses until the next round.
Right now most Linux users are techies who are very familiar with everything involving computers, the ones who aren't were probably introduced to it and have a techie friend to maintain it.
duh i could of told u that... i repair the damn computers people break... i would say only people who care about their data actually shell out the money to keep their antivirus up to date.
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
Pretty much all of the users I've scrubbed machines for had the default free McAffe antivirus installed. They hadn't been updated, ever. No new virus defs downloaded, ever. Definition files were years old.
The users had no idea that they were supposed to be doing this. They don't read the instructions, they just see an antivirus program running, and figure they're protected.
What percentage of the respondents were using Windows? I suppose antispyware and updated antivirus software wouldn't really apply to Linux, UNIX, BSD, and OS X users.
You're living in a dream world. Complexity is always a problem. The more complex something is, the more vulnerabilities it has.
And this pertains to everything.
Witness the durability of bacteria compared to a human being.
None of this matters if the user is using their machine as a local admin (which most are). Demoting the user to a 'user' (not 'power user) is the biggest security improvement you can make. The rest is icing on the cake.
I strongly recommend this controversial ( http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=98912 ) thread for those interested in security comparison between Linux and Windows... Basically, it seems there is no real difference between Linux and Windows when it comes to security...
Many contemporary software developers think they invented the computer. Every generation is "entitled" to think they're saving the world.
I'm a little biased, having been a VAX/VMS zealot for many years (VMS 2.1 through 5.0) and more VAX hardware platforms than I care to list... By today's standards they were slower and mostly line oriented, but that's not to say they didn't have their uses whether running Unix or VMS. They had the equivalent of IM's (Phone/Talk) and a host of business/research applications. Not to mention one of the time's largest contributed software library.
I have the satisfaction of knowing that in 20 years, those developers will look back upon today's computers and say, "...those computers sucked".
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
"Do you have service pack 2 installed?" no
"Did you enable windows firewall?" no
"Is your computer protected by an anti-virus program?" no
I own a Mac as well as several linux machines.
Maybe somebody can suggest a good anti-spyware program for the Mac.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
I guess Sygate is no more - they've been borgified by Symantec, and Sygate products are being discontinued. That's a shame - the Sygate Personal Firewall was easy to set up and use, but it offered a lot more technical options and information than the average consumer security app, too.
I'll tell you why:
F P S
Let me start by saying AV can really slow down a machine.
Combine that with some form of (what is usually more needed) spyware removal software and you have all the makings to halve your computers potential.
O.K. so I exaggerate a lot, it is more like 30%, but it does slow a computer down noticeably.
I used to run Ad-aware, and AVG. They both went to the can as far as accuracy goes.
I switched to Giant(M$) and McAffee, after three years of never getting a single virus, and only getting spyware infections while TRYING (for testing purposes) I decided why run either?
The results have been amazing.
My computer boots EXTREMELY fast & it's a few years old.
I have two hardware firewalls, and I still can get blizzard downloader to run. (Although I must admit it took me a bit to figure that one out...)
Now, that doesn't mean I don't run a scan every now and then, I just don't have anything loaded to scan on the fly. Everything moves faster on my machine without those two resource hogs sucking up processing power. Even FAH had a significant boost.
My specs?
2.53 ghz 533mhz fsb p4 O.C.'d to 2.8 (10%)on stock cooling
1g generic ram.
a craptastic 9800 se
striped baracudas
an Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
Now keep in mind, all may be fine on a state of the art machine, but for those of us who have a house, car, have girlfriends, families etc... we can't always have the latest & greatest hardware.
But I guarantee that Johnny HardwareReviewer doesn't report frame rates with AV/Spyware software running, and if he does, he is probably ridiculed for having lower scores than Site x.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Last spring I bought a computer with Norton Internet Security pre-installed. I've seriously considered uninstalling it. The only alerts I've ever received have been asking me to confirm that some program I've just updated is allowed to make DNS queries, and warnings that some horrible, evil program wants to access the net. Which would be OK, except for the fact that the only horrible, evil program it complains about is Sun's Java update checker.
Last week I spent at least an hour and went through a half dozen reboots trying to update Java on this machine, something that was a simple, 5-minute task on the two Windows systems I updated at work, because Norton kept interfering with the updater. I could disable the firewall for the installation, but the updater wouldn't launch again after it was jammed.
It was actually easier to upgrade Java on my Fedora Core box, even though I went to the effort to combine Jpackage.org's nosrc.rpm with the binary installer from Sun instead of just installing Sun's RPM.
The previous Windows box I had at home ran McAfee briefly, but it interfered too much with the system. Of course, that was a Windows Me box, so lousy performance comes with the territory.
In other news: copyrights are out of control, Microsoft sucks, and all the other things that only slashdotters (and other tech-literate people) know. This might be news to my grandmother, but it isn't to me. If you read
The most important things for security are (in this order): Informed User, Automatic Updates (or frequent ones), Firefox (anything not IE or IE based), Anti-virus, Permissions (don't run with admin priviledges to surf the web!), and lastly anti-spyware.
I do low level computer support (hey I'm a college student, what do you expect?) and if everyone could turn on auto updates, use firefox and an AV program, and maybe even run as a limited account most of the time; my job would be so much easier.
But since no one does I have a slew of linux and windows liveCD's with all kinds of antivirus antispyware software to clean. Then a whole bunch of free antivirus, firewall, and firefox installers which I put on their computer (with their permission). While this scanning is going on I take the time to educate them somewhat, and peole have come back and thanked me.
i have had my comp now for 2 years..XP Pro, McAfee Firewall & Anti-Virus w/ Lavasoft AdAwareSE..never had a virus, spyware, or blue screen and use it heavily and extesively.. for heavy duty gaming, development and 3D modeling, plus i am all over the web. Just as a thought though i dont go around web sites that are more likely to have viruses such porn, anime or anything like that. My take is, is that if you do, then all bets are off as far as being 100% protected.. you get what you ask for.
I also have cookies set to prompt. that way the cookies that are allowed are ones such as crucial websites that i need for certain message boards, banking online and anything else that i need to supply my username and password. Actionscript is only allowed for certain website and just for kicks the windows firewall is turned on.
Just goes to show that properly administered correctly windows can be stable and virus free.
Just FYI:
Complete Specs:
P4 Intel 3.4 Ghz
2 GB DDR RAM @ 533 Mhz
250 GB HD X 2 (RAID 0)
Geforce 6800 SLI (2 X 6800 w/256 MB DDR per card, drives 2 21" monitors)
Klipsch 5.1 Surround Sound driven by a Soundblaster Audigy ZS Pro card.
Thanks Greg! I never noticed that before!
:)
I'm guessing it just refers to the fact that is it On-Demand Antivirus only, not On-Access. Its certainly true of the app! I guess no-one can confirm except themselves though.
Thanks again
DugUK
I work with many new users on Windows. They see a popup or an advertisment for "antispyware" software or "antivirus"; they click on it and install it because they read articles about "not having spyware protection", so then they install the software thinking they are doing the right thing. Then they start getting tones of spyware on their machines; it just happens to be that the "antispyware" software they installed is a trojan horse. So then I have to use real antispyware software such as adawareSE or Microsoft Antispyware to remove the other "antispyware" software. Sometimes I have to even use regedit to remove many keys within the registry. Deleting run key entries and removing installed services. Sometimes it even requires a boot disk to remove the really nasty ones. New users do not know good security from bad -- Firewall and antispyware protection programs can be the modern vehicle for a good trojan horse. What happened to the good 'ole days of the boot block virus? I just recommend to many new users that they don't install anything from the internet, and avoid outlook and IE. -R
when you say "I haven't gotten any spyware in a long time and (to my knowledge) have never been infected by a virus/trojan/worm", is very telling. This means you've never bothered to scan your computer, because you're in denial about the state of its security.
When I say "Though I have no real-time antivirus software installed for performance reasons, I occasionally run a scan at Trend Micro's HouseCall site and it hasn't yet found anything of significance", does that sound more informed?
A better arguement would be "Why isn't Microsoft installing protection along with Windows?"
The lack of bundled antivirus software in Microsoft Windows 4.x (95/98/ME) and 5.x (2000/XP) may likely have been related to antitrust issues from when Microsoft tried to include MSAV, an antivirus program, with the operating system around the time of MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1.
A firewall does not instantly mean you are secure. You have to have it properly configured and you must know how to deal with anything needing access to/from the internet. Blindly allowing everything through isn't the way..
AV requires maintenance... updates, etc.
I constantly see people asking for help who have both because their system still got hosed by something they ran. They end up formatting. I think it is too late once your AV detects it.. the next thing you can go is deprive it of powerful privileges because it can only fubar your account. As a rule, though, I would also suggest ZIP files instead of executable setups if possible and as an additional rule: if it can't be run with less privileges, you better make damn well sure you know what it is before giving it admin privileges.
Blame the user, not the software.
OS X is a great example of how asking for the admin password every time a modification of the central system is requested makes worms all but impossible and trojans much more difficult.
Actually, OS X is a great example of how asking for the admin password every time a modification of the central system is requested quickly trains the user to type in their password whenever "the system" asks for it in a popup window.
The result can hardly be described as "secure". All a piece of malware needs to do is pop up the same sort of window, and it'll have the password. This will work with all but the most experienced computer users.
It's funny that linux and *BSD software (other than OS X) seems not to have much adopted this approach. Hardly anything uses this popup password window approach. Maybe this has something to do with their greater security.
In general, training novice users to type in their password many times per day, whenever some app wants it, is not an approach that will lead to a more secure system.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
how is this news?
anyone who wants true protection for their PC should turn it off by clicking Start > Shut Down (or your equivelent in your OS of choice) and then removing all the cables going to your Case. Proceed to your closest Big&Tall, and purchase an extremely oversized comdem. place it over the case and never touch it again.
Just my Veiw.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
News for nerds...
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Folks on Broadband Reports' security forum are raving over NOD32 over AVG, AntiVir, KAV, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
And you're living in a defeatist world. So the question is, which of these worlds is closer to reality?
Complexity is always a problem.
I said as much.
Witness the durability of bacteria compared to a human being.
Not sure what your point is here. I might point out that we have antibiotics while they don't have antihominids, but that's sort of a cheap shot, and anyway is beside my main point.
If you're trying to suggest that it's as inevitable for complex computer systems to catch viruses as it is for complex lifeforms, that would be true only if we discovered the computer systems under the same rocks we climbed out from under. But we didn't discover our computer systems under rocks, we designed them, and we have more or less complete control over them.
The tragic thing about the personal computer virus epidemic is that the most virulent of those viruses use vectors which were designed and built in, deliberately, up front, at some cost, specifically to allow any untrusted programs (including viral ones) to propagate and run unchecked. We didn't have to do that. We could have done otherwise. This problem didn't "just happen"; we caused it. The viruses didn't accidentally discover some coincidental vulnerability we didn't know we had; they deliberately took advantage of obvious features which in many cases couldn't have been better designed to suit their needs if that had been our explicit goal.
It's almost as if all cars had secret remote-control ejection seats that nobody knew about, and then some punk kids discovered the feature and devised their own radio transmitter so that they could sit by the side of the road and eject drivers right and left for lotsa laffs. And instead of asking the manufacturers why their cars had these dangerous exploitable features that they didn't ask for and don't need, people instead accepted the situation as a natural, unavoidable consequence of driving, or went and paid extra money for jamming devices to block the malicious radio signals, until such time as the punks discovered a workaround...
I do the same thing on *nix boxes, including OS X. These platforms aren't as exploited. Period. I do still run ClamAV on public mail servers or Samba boxes which allow upload. It won't hurt my computer, but I don't want to have other computers hurt by my box either.
but I wish I could use it to control which applications get to send data out.
I've configured a small PC made of leftover parts and a Linux installation to be my router/firewall. The ability to filter outbound traffic has been built into Linux for a long time (iptables, ipchains, etc) and there are applications like shorewall that help manage this. Best of all it is all free (and "Free").
I'm not a huge fan of most firewall solutions on Windows. I find them cumbersome, annoying and unstable. I HATE it when some nag-box comes up to tell me someone tried to access port x or ask me if program y can connect to the network. I know there are options to make things less obtrusive, but why make the most annoying configuration the default? I also seem to find that the more Symantec, Mcaffee, etc. software that is on a windows box, the crappier the performance. Might as well let the spyware and viruses run on there cuz the "cure" is almost as bad as the disease at times.
If I WERE to pick a firewall solution I could live with it would be something like Kerio, which semed to be the least annoying nd most simple to deal with...except maybe for the firewall bundled into Windows with XP SP2. I think Kerio would let you filter outbound traffic too, but I'm not 100% sure.
MS-DOS and QDOS didn't have this capability, so the standard became that any program had full access to just about anything. The only high security implemented was in the CPU itself, where a system trap was needed to get access to 'Ring 0' (privileged) instructions.
Just a quick correction: the 8088 and 8086 systems that MS-DOS originally ran on didn't even have this level of security. The ring architecture of privelege levels was added in the 80286 -- and even then, it wasn't used by DOS which ran in "real mode", disabling the system. It wasn't used at all until Windows 2.0 was released.
How often does this happen, really?
I realize I'm anything but a "typical user", but OS X (which I use every day) virtually never pops up these password wondows of which you speak. The only time I see them is when *I* initiate the installation of some software, and then of course I expect to receive them. They're not randomly popping up at other times. If they did, I'd be surprised -- but I think a novice user would be surprised, too. (Indeed, I suspect many novice users wouldn't know what to do, because it's not immediately obvious that the "administrator password" requested is typically your own user password.)
With Norton Internet Security, your effectively OPENED the box for trivial system compromise.
- PC = Microsoft Windows (confusing hw and sw, and disregarding any
other OS around)
- Internet = Internet Explorer ("WWW? TCP/IP?" "no, thanks, I had anchovies at dinner")
- email = Outlook ("you see, email travels through Internet..." "You sure email is Internet? in my PC, the email window is different...")
- installing a program = running a program
and so on.I hate it when I read/hear those misidentifications on the news (come on, C|Net, you can do better than that); and then today I read in
Wow. I guess you learn something new every day, huh? (Well, I do, it seems).
Thanks for the correction, much appreciated; makes the main point even more concrete.
-Q
Well, I haven't seen it a lot, but I have been surprised by such popups. Being an experienced computer user (programmer whatever), I was naturally suspicious and didn't give permission. But many users wouldn't be as suspicious as you or I, and could be tricked this way. It only takes once.
The unexpected popups that I've seen have been mostly from web pages or email with "active" content. This includes things like flash, which can do it. I have a lot of browsers on my PB, and I mostly use mozilla and firefox, primarily because they are the best at blocking active junk and not bogging down the cpu. But they both have a bug: You can block javascript or flash, but you can't block both. So I run mozilla with JS active and flash blocked, and firefox with flash active and JS blocked. So I occasionally get popups trying to scam me into typing my password.
This is also a problem with email. The mail readers I use on my PB, mostly Thunderbird, and firefox for gmail, do a good job of spotting and blocking spam. But they tend to miss a few now and then, and if I read those, I often get something active that I don't know how to block, and sometimes it asks me for my password. Again, I'm too suspicious to fall for it, but since the popup looks just like the usual ones, it's easy to imagine a naive user responding to it.
In some other fora, I have read a number of comments from Mac users who say that they've been conned this way. So maybe it's not a major problem like on MS Windows, but it's a problem that bites some users.
In general, I'd say that Mac and linux users aren't much bothered by this because of all the other checks done by the software, so that such scams are often intercepted and killed before the user sees them.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.