How secure is your computer?

Gandalf23

I'm interested to findout what you guys are doing to prevent adware/malware/viruses etc. I'm becoming more paranoid and p*ssed off about all the malicious crap out there these days.

I use the following software, and make a big effort to keep it updated as often as I can (sometimes daily). I also run full system scans with each piece of software at least once a week. As well as that, I also complete full backups of all my data once each week to two different places (my iPod and an external hard drive).

1. Firewall = ZoneAlarm. I have found ZoneAlarm to be an excellent firewall (and free too!). It takes a while to "train" but overall it is essential and its working really well for me.

2. AdAware SE Personal. Excellent free program which I use weekly. It frequently detects malware.

3. SpyBot Search and Distroy. Another excellent free adware detection programme which also frequently detects malware.

4. Avast! antivirus. Again, a freebie. I have been using avast! for about a month now (I had been using Norton for the previous 3 years). I completed full system scans with Norton at least once a week, and only rarely was there a virus, trojan, etc. I decided to change to avast! after googling antivirus reviews, and the first full system scan with avast! picked up 4 viruses and 1 trojan that Norton had missed!

5. Spyware blaster. Runs in the background and blocks malware.

6. Microsoft AntiSpy. I cant make my mind up about this one. Is it free or just a trial? It has never detected anything on my computer, but seems to be well regarded.

7. Bazooka. Has never detected anything... I'm thinking of getting rid of it.

8. WebRoot Spy Sweeper. This is the latest addition to my arsenal. I have been using Spy Sweeper for about a week or two now, and I'm amazed by the results. After running all the above stuff (and detecting NOTHING), I ran SpySweeper for the first time and it detected 3 bits of adware!

9. I use Firefox instead of IE (this one explains itself!!!)

So, thats me! I know some of you might think this is paranoia and control freakish of me, but because of the fact that my laptop is on and off a number of big networks I have to be careful.

CyberGhost

well you listed pretty much everything,

I'd just add

RegDefend and ProcessGuard to that list

kaimera

lappy ::

nod32 av.
MS Anti_Spyware
AdAware
Spybot.

PC:
AVG
MS AS
AdAware

not online much with the pc.

lappy is primary usage so all is updated and scanned one a week or so.

^whitey^

Ad-Aware
Spybot.
Sygate personal Firewall
AVG Anti Virus
Win Tasks Pro - getting rid of this its not needed

Fenster

Shorewall firewall
Packet filtering via my router
Tripwire
Clamav
Firefox

And most importantly, I'm a careful browser.

snappieT

Zonealarm Pro
Ad-Aware Professional
MKS_vir (One of the 2 that scored 100% in recent tests)
MS Antispyware β
PeerGuardian 2
Trillian instead of MSN
Firefox instead of IE

halkar

I use no firewalls, virus scanners etc. From time to time I check the tas manager for anything unusal running, check the google to find out what they are and I use procexp to kill and delete them afterwards. Regular checks of \windows and \windows\system32 sorted by date will give you an idea of what has been coming from internet as well as looking at the registry under 'Run' of current user and HKLM. I would not recommend it to anyone that does not know what they are doing though

petes

halkar wrote:

I use no firewalls, virus scanners etc. From time to time I check the tas manager for anything unusal running, check the google to find out what they are and I use procexp to kill and delete them afterwards. Regular checks of \windows and \windows\system32 sorted by date will give you an idea of what has been coming from internet as well as looking at the registry under 'Run' of current user and HKLM. I would not recommend it to anyone that does not know what they are doing though

wtf no virus scanners or anything. you sir are mad.

Gandalf23

petes wrote:

wtf no virus scanners or anything. you sir are mad.

either that or the guy really knows what he is doing...

Gandalf23

Fenster wrote:

And most importantly, I'm a careful browser.

Yes indeed, the most important thing.

How do you rate ClamAV?

petes

Gandalf23 wrote:

either that or the guy really knows what he is doing...

what he is doing isnt that hard but why do it at all when there are perfectly good apps good apps to it for me

halkar

petes wrote:

wtf no virus scanners or anything. you sir are mad.

You can have zillions of firewalls, virus scanners, adaware etc but there are worms out there will still get in to your pc and none of these will get rid of it for you or prevent it nor the custom fixes from anti virus companies will get rid off.
Yes sir, I know what I am doing, I know how registry work and I know what should be running and reside in my system folders and I know how to mess with OSes, can be fun bu won't reccomend to anyone

Don't forget, these nasty people who writes viruses, companies who fills our computers with junk are always one step ahead of whom are trying to prevent these.

petes

halkar wrote:

You can have zillions of firewalls, virus scanners, adaware etc but there are worms out there will still get in to your pc and none of these will get rid of it for you or prevent it nor the custom fixes from anti virus companies will get rid off.
Yes sir, I know what I am doing, I know how registry work and I know what should be running and reside in my system folders and I know how to mess with OSes, can be fun bu won't reccomend to anyone

Don't forget, these nasty people who writes viruses, companies who fills our computers with junk are always one step ahead of whom are trying to prevent these.

Yes but why not have some protection anyway, at least it stops all the minor ****e. And yes I know how a registry works too, but Im not taking any chances. At lesat there is some line of defense if one of these gets in your system. You have nothing. Bad practice imo.

halkar

It all depends what sites you visit. Most sites I am regular are respectable trusted sites unlike those warez, pron, free music, free this, free that crap site who distrubute this stuff

I recomment everyone to check if you can find files like *.a3d, these are usually in Windows directory and you be surprise what you see in them, all your passwords since you last reinstalled your system Guess what, not all of these are detected by any of the software listed here.

uberwolf

OS X.3 TBH

other than that Virex to prevent propogating PC viruses (how considerate am I),
Little snitch to control out bound network communications.
Firefox
MSN for Mac.

Orion

Gandalf23 wrote:

either that or the guy really knows what he is doing...

Rubbish. What he's doing is reactive - looking for things that have infected his system and may already have done harm. Using AV/Spyware detection/Firewalls is proactive - preventing them getting in in the first place.

That's assuming that he's not just taking the pi$$ anyway

petes

halkar wrote:

It all depends what sites you visit. Most sites I am regular are respectable trusted sites unlike those warez, pron, free music, free this, free that crap site who distrubute this stuff

I recomment everyone to check if you can find files like *.a3d, these are usually in Windows directory and you be surprise what you see in them, all your passwords since you last reinstalled your system Guess what, not all of these are detected by any of the software listed here.

Have you ever put a disk into your pc from an untrusted source i.e from the front of a magazine, another computer...you kind of need a virus scanner for this. And email attachments. Its not just from surfing the net you know.

petes

Macros42 wrote:

Rubbish. What he's doing is reactive - looking for things that have infected his system and may already have done harm. Using AV/Spyware detection/Firewalls is proactive - preventing them getting in in the first place.

That's assuming that he's not just taking the pi$$ anyway

what he said

hantakage

I agree with Macros42 - Halkars Solutions are reactive, and to be fully secure you need to be fully proactive in your approach for security.

Just to clarify, I am well skilled in working with Windows at a low down level and encounter a TONNE of Malware/Spyware in the daily workings of my job. I also spend every day at work analyzing registry changes, system behaviour, virus activity, rootkit technologies etc.

Having said all that there really is no substitute for the proactive approach, or better again combine the proactive approach with what Halkar is doing. Have all your AV and Firewalls installed and chugging away, but also have some simple analysis tools at your disposal for when a threat gets through all these.

95% of the time the proactive solution will do the trick, but not always - especially in the case of 0-day threats like Slammer, Blaster. Doesn't matter how save a surfer you are when they hit, you still have the same Windows vulnerabilities as the rest of us.

BTW For the record the tools/utils I run on my Laptop are as follows:

Norton Internet Security 2005 Anti-Spware Edition Beta
Microsoft Anti-Spyware
Spy Sweeper
Snort IDS
Norton Ghost
Firewall Builder (uses IPTables)

Utils (most from SysInternals)
IDA
VMware
Regmon, Filemon, TDIMon, Ethereal, Regshot, ApiMon, ProcessExplorer

Canis Lupus

Personally I use:

Zonealarm
AVG
AdAware.

petes

I keep a fence around mine

grimloch

ive a norton firewall and av software and have yet to get any serious virus etc, that being said im a careful browser

Fenster

Gandalf23 wrote:

Yes indeed, the most important thing.

How do you rate ClamAV?

Its grand. It does the job, but as I've said elsewhere, its basically intended for mailservers, so it has all the subtlety of a hammer when it comes to removing infected files (this is on windows machines, I thankfully haven't encountered a virus on my Linux machines yet), so you need to be very careful about letting it remove files.

EDIT: I'm not using Windows right now, incidently. All the programs I listed are within Linux.

frodi

Zone labs pro + firewall in router
AVG pro, updated & scanned daily
Ad-aware
Spybot
Firefox & thunderbird
K9 spam filter

Fairly reckless surfer and installer of new programs, lucky so far.
I do a regular clean out and uninstall of seldom used programs.

jessy

I’m fairly new to Macs, Running OS X ver 10.3 and from what ive seen and heard so far the security threat is miniscule compared to PC’s Running Windows, so im starting to only use the mac for Web and Internet Usage.

There was a similar Thread or post a while back (maybe last week) where another poster said he never had any antivirus and never got a virus, the poor guys machine must be riddled with malware, @poster on the thread who said he doesn't run AV: Its not enough to be a careful Browser this will not Stop worms (which IMO are the most dangerous of all Malware) A Worm is a Standalone program Which is designed to multiply and Spread to other Machine by what ever Means necessary. There are a lot of worms designed these Days which are just mass Mailers, No real threat (as in they cause shag all damage to you machine) but you probably wouldn't even Know if you had one, And if these Worms can infect your system then a similar more dangerous worm could get in just as easy. It is very important to realise that your computer only needs to be connected to the internet to get infected i.e. you dont even need a browser window open. the work your doing to Check for virus is not nearly as good as a poor AV scanner.

Laptop: AV/Firewall/AntiSpyware = panda AV Platinum
Adaware
MS AntiSpyware
Browser = Opera

Desktop: AV/Firewall = BitDefender Pro 8
Adaware
MS AntiSpyware
Browser = Opera

Mac: Mac’s Built-in Firewall and Sophos AV

Browser = Safari

[EDIT] I Also do Full system scan at least once a week (Even on the MAC). AV updates at least once Every Day.

Stark

Windows: Firefox
Panda Antivirus (I found F-secure and AVG caused my PC to freeze up on occasion)
ZoneAlarm firewall
Spybot, Ad-aware, Microsoft anti-spyware for spyware (bloody curse)

Linux: Firefox
nothing else

alantc

Is running the Spybot Resident worthwhile? Does it tell you when something is blocked. The only time I notice it is when I'm installing something and have to allow registry changes.

I ran a spybot chack today after noticing this thread, probably the first in 2 months, and got nothing.

Nukem

Using these a while and think they are banging.

Sygate
AVG
Spybot
Adware SE
Xoftspy

Love AVG and sygate think they are great. Had Zonealarm and Avast as well but they are finiky i thought. Suppose whatever you think is best and keeps your comp safe.

Nukem

Thomas

halkar's methods are fine againt virus/spyware because they need at least some careless user input to infect a system - i have all the common antivirus and spyware programs but have never ever detected anything because im a careful browser also. but not having a firewall is unnecessarily risky. a worm can get onto an unfirewalled pc in minutes regardless of the experience of the user or what sites she/he visits.

tom

Gandalf23

Stark wrote:

Windows: Firefox
Panda Antivirus (I found F-secure and AVG caused my PC to freeze up on occasion)
ZoneAlarm firewall
Spybot, Ad-aware, Microsoft anti-spyware for spyware (bloody curse)

Linux: Firefox
nothing else

I have a Linux dual boot on my laptop... there is never a need to worry about the Linux end of things.

Gandalf23

Nukem wrote:

Had Zonealarm and Avast as well but they are finiky i thought

Explain please

Nukem

Gandalf23 wrote:

Explain please

Dunno found avast wasnt detcting bits when AVG did???????? Thought it strange - also Zonealarm is a bit more complicated than Sygate regarding blocking stuff . As said personal preference really. Just got used to what i have and find them fine.

Nukem

Mac daddy

Server - File Server
United Linux 3.0
United linux firewall
Viruses - what viruses
malware -nada
Every now and again i run Clam
opera 8.0 browser
Only used for lan not to connect to net -

Desktop
Suse 9.2
suse firewall
Viruses - nope
malware - nope
Same as server - clam every now and again
opera again

Laptop nr 1
Windows Xp pro-
Zone alarm
Norton systemworks 2005 premier
malware adaware and spybot -
This laptop is only used for my Vpn connection in to work.
Opera browser

Laptop nr 2
Windows xp home
And Suse 9.2
Zone alarm
Norton systemworks 2005
same ol' adaware - spybot
Clam - to scan the windows files!
Wireless mode using wpa key- mac adress limited
Opera browser

I have to say i have a pretty secure setup never had any problems -

I rather have linux over windows any day less worries - only using windows one my for my vpn connection -
Two to play new games evernow and again.
Find linux much more solid and reliable - love suse

Orion

Mac daddy wrote:

Server - File Server
Desktop
Laptop nr 1
Laptop nr 2

How many smegging hands have you got?

Mutant_Fruit

Best way to secure a computer is to actually pay attention to what you're installing. I'd run the odd scan of spybot, adaware and the weekly AVG scan, but they'd rarely (if ever) pick up anything except one or two cookies from those times when i have to use IE, and never any virus's.

Thats not down to fancy software scanning my computer, thats because i check what i'm installing and i'm not stupid enough to open dodgy attachments. The ONLY security is actually knowing exactly what you're doing (and of course a firewall, for those things you can't stop with just knowledge). Everything else is just the second layer of defense. The first layer is always the user.

Ignorance is the only reason we have spyware and (most) virus's. Educate people about em, and you'll find the problem will vanish. The only problem with that idea, is that people never listen.

*Shakes fist at the people who keep calling him to fix their spyware laden computers* THAT MEANS YOU!

TacT

Nukem wrote:

Using these a while and think they are banging.

Sygate
AVG
Spybot
Adware SE
Xoftspy

Love AVG and sygate think they are great. Had Zonealarm and Avast as well but they are finiky i thought. Suppose whatever you think is best and keeps your comp safe.

Nukem

same except I switched to Tiny personal firewall since Sygate didn't like my system for some reason :eek:

Flashman

Seems a lot of people are using adaware. Did anyone read about the removal of certain adware from their definitions updates? They have been accused of reaching some sort of arrangement with the makers of WhenU and possibly others, whereby users of adaware can no longer get rid of their brand of adware crap unless they do it manually.
Since this was brought to light there has been a flood of negative feedback on lavasoft's support forums, which were brought offline recently for a 'software update'.

Adaware and whenu

Lavasoft forums down...


If this is true then its a sad end to a once-great piece of freeware.

breadmonkey

Does anyone here use a program called "Kaspersky Anti-Hacker"?

Mac daddy

Macros42 wrote:

How many smegging hands have you got?

Not Enough or enough room

SouperComputer

Mac OS X :ninja: