There’s a joke that many people bring out when new Windows viruses hit big…. it goes along the lines of, “download a fix here” and the link points to a knoppix linux livecd download, or a Mandriva download disk, fedora/etc… Some say linux isn’t affected by as many viruses because it lacks market share, I would point out that server market share (take a look at how many linux web servers there are…) would seem to tip the scales a bit, but that’s not the point of this post. What is the point is this…. When you have a Windows pc that is infested what you should do is disconnect from the internet. The problem is, that typically prevents you from getting the tools you need to fix the machine.
Category: Computers
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 13 – Your own worst enemy
Once upon a time I did an article about the biggest computer security vulnerability ever. I’ve also passed along the old “the most dangerous part of a car is the nut behind the wheel” joke. If you haven’t got it yet, the computer user can be the “weakest link”. Let’s face it, you’ve got antivirus, a firewall, all the current windows updates, antispyware and a website pops up. The website looks like Windows security center and says you have a virus and need to get official antivirus software.
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Migrating Contacts from Evolution to Kontact
I’ve toyed around with the idea of migrating everything over to Kontact for my mail. I’ve used Evolution since moving over to linux, but there are some things about Kontact that just seem slicker to me. While I was doing the install, I had the laptop setup to receive messages through IMAP and used Kontact as the client. There were a few features that I wanted to spend a bit more time with. So, the first thing is getting the data into Kontact.
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 12 – Antispyware
I’ve talked about Antivirus software as an essential. Today we’re going to look at Antispyware software. There is a difference. By definition a virus is a piece of software that infects other files or copies itself. A worm is a virus that spreads without user intervention. (From one open network port to another for instance.) Spyware is not necessarily in either category. Spyware is the name given to software that tracks online behavior, some may track online searches, some may be more invasive and track anything typed in to the computer!
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Disinfecting a PC… part 11
All in all, what I’ve documented was a bit over three hours worth of attention to the machine (much more for the full scans, but I didn’t have to stand and watch them.) I didn’t document a sidetrip to a second antivirus scanner. It’s nice to see a system cleaned up that had been so thoroughly infected. There are a couple other notes I should pass along though. When a system has been trojaned the BEST advice is to wipe the disc and reinstall from scratch. (Erase/reformate/install from scratch.)
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Network administration over the holidays
Nobody wants to be tied to their job over the holidays, but what if someone has hacked your servers and is using your machine to scam thousands of people a day? Does that keep for two weeks? Does someone monitor the abuse address? Incidents.org has a post on messages they’ve got from some reporting to abuse administrators receiving back vacation notices that things are basically on “autopilot until sometime next year.”
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Linux php-exploit bot
Incidents.org writes to remind as that bot’s aren’t just for Windows. The recent PHP exploits have seen the use of the “kaiten” bot. After infection on the system it connects to an IRC server. It would primarily target linux systems. They do give a very good way to blunt most Linux bot-style malwares…
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The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 10
I think it’s time to wrap things up. The KDE start new session option is back after the changes I mentioned to the /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc file I mentioned in a previous post. There are no outstanding issues from the upgrade. (I need to adjust the font sizes down a bit, but that’s not a big deal.) This series, of course, has been spread out over days. The actual event covered two afternoon’s/evening’s. The first day was the attempted urpmi upgrade (which didn’t go too well.)
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 11 – Why?
Alright, so you’re still reading this series and you’re thinking. Look, I’m not protecting national security secrets. All I’m doing is (running a business|emailing my grandkids|using the web for research).
True, good point. You’re not at the defense department. OK. Let’s say you just use your computer for email and web browsing. That’s low priority stuff right? No sensitive information on your PC? Do you ever do banking online? Yes – then you should be concerned… No? You should still be concerned… here’s why…
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Disinfecting a PC… part 10
Before I get things wrapped up, I like to scan rinse and repeat until the scans come up clean. So, this scan of AVG gives a chance to delete the archive entry I mentioned the first pass it took. And spybot get’s updated from the internet and re-runs. All looks clean there… Ad-aware get’s an update check and runs again. Everything there looks clean now. The next thing to do is disable and uninstall tightvnc, I don’t want to leave bhodemon running at boot or the tea-timer from spybot now that things are fairly settled.