A computer virus is often termed ‘malware’ because it is a type of malicious software. Other types of malware are worms and Trojans. Let’s take a look at each of these below.
Viruses
A virus usually arrives onto your computer hidden inside of another program which is often delivered by email attachments. It derives its name from the fact that just like a living virus, it needs a host to live and breed on. When you run the infected host program, you then launch the virus into the memory of your computer where it sets up home and waits to go about it’s intended function of destroying your files and infecting other computers.
Once the virus has infected your computer it waits for the programmed trigger to signal it into action. The trigger coded into the virus and can be anything from a specific date to a set number of times it has replicated itself.
Once triggered, it goes about the destruction it was designed for. It may be a simple deletion of files or pranks. It could also be programmed to destroy your operating system.
Viruses are commonly spread on email attachments. This is why you should never open an attachment unless you know who it was from. The problem is that sometimes it can appear as if a virus is just an attachment from someone in your address book, so always be on alert when you get an email with an attachment on it particularly if it is an .exe file.
Worms
Worms work a lot like viruses do. They are also self replicating and can reproduce so fast that they can overload and shut down entire systems. The difference between a virus and a worm is that the worm doesn’t require a host to live on. A worm is stand alone malware. They also usually hitch their way onto your computer through email but don’t need an attachment to ride on.
Trojans aka Trojan horses
Trojans take their name from the classic Greek story for they misrepresent themselves as well. They often pretend to be something they are not. Trojans are not self reproducing like worms and viruses but they can do just as much damage. They hide on other programs and record your keystrokes and steal passwords and credit card numbers.
Fighting malware
It is important to stay up to date with the latest methods being used to combat malware. Your computer can be destroyed by one of these nasty computer programs or your credit card and other personal information can be compromised. For starters it is a good idea to not open email attachments to reduce your risk of picking up a virus. Use a good virus detecting program and firewall to keep the pesky bugs out of your system.
Senin, 09 Februari 2009
Harmful Viruses And Other Malwares In Computers
Laptop Security: Don't Leave Home Without It
Hundreds of thousands of laptops are lost or stolen each year. What if it happened to you? Think about all the valuable information stored in your laptop and the chaos that would enter your life should it become lost or stolen. Hours and hours of hard work on that special project—gone. Volumes of resource materials you collected for months, years—gone. All the photos you unloaded from your camera and never got around to editing and printing—gone. Most important, your personal information, your credit cards and bank statements—you shudder to think about it. Laptop security should be every owner’s high priority. Not just protection from physical loss, but from the internal infestation of spyware, viruses, hackers and spammers. Your security needs to be maintained and updated. Don’t take for granted that the security purchased with your laptop is sufficient. It may have been a three-month free trial subscription that you forgot to renew. Better check. Treat your laptop as you would your wallet, your purse, your fine jewelry. Protect it as you would your child. Here are some important steps for protecting your laptop.
· Make sure your OS (Operating System) is secure. Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro are secure. Windows 95/98/ME are not—anyone could access your data.
· Password protect your data.
· Send in your manufacturer’s registration. If your stolen laptop is ever sent in for maintenance or repair, it can be traced through your registration.
· Turn on your popup blocker. On the Internet, go to Tools/Internet Options. Click on the Privacy tab and check the box that says Block popups.
· Install Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus software, and keep it up to date.
· Pay attention to Windows Updates and take the time to install them. A few minutes is all it takes. It’s so easy to click "remind me later," but even if you have to restart your computer, it’s time well spent.
Simple Security Measures to Protect Your Laptop:
· Carry your laptop in an inconspicuous bag. A fancy designer case appears to have "steal me" written all over it.
· Never leave it unattended, not even for a minute.
· Store it in a locked drawer when not in use.
· Label it. Use conspicuous identity labels that would be difficult for a thief to remove. Engrave your name on the cover.
Internal Security--Protect Your Data:
Set the BIOS password. This is the first thing that appears when the machine is turned on. Most computers refuse to boot if the password attempt fails three times.
Set the Log In Password. Most systems require a log in password. If the password entered is incorrect, the system will refuse the user. Password protection is not 100% secure, but it certainly presents a difficult challenge to a thief.
Sensors: There are some very sophisticated sensors that can be purchased for added protection, such as a fingerprint sensor, or a gesture sensor. Your password could be a sequential pattern of movements of your head from sided to side, up or down. There are also alarm sensors that sound if someone touches your laptop when you are out of range. Additionally, there are fingerprint sensors, retinal sensors, or even your typing characteristics can be recorded for authentication. Sensors are fairly new and not yet a standard feature on laptops.
Tracking Devices: You can now buy software that enables your laptop to "check in" to a tracking center by using a signal. The tracking center service works with police departments and internet service providers to track and recover stolen laptops.
Personal Firewall: Install this extra layer of protection not only to prevent intruders from hacking into your system, but also prevent your information from leaking out.
NTFS: If you have Windows NT/2000/XP, use the NTFS filing system. NTFS stands for NT Filing System.
Disable the Guest Account, or at least assign it a very complex, hard-to-guess password.
Rename the Administrator Account. Don’t use the word Admin in the name. A different name will make it harder for hackers to open the door. You could also create a "dummy" administrator account. Assign it a complex password, too hard to guess, and restrict all privileges. Then enable "auditing" so that you can tell if access has been attempted.
Disable the "Last Logged-In" user name. This will help prevent hackers from password guessing. You can find the instructions to do this on the installation CD for your laptop.
Encrypt your folders. Use EFS (Encrypting Filing System). When a folder is encrypted, any file stored in that folder is also encrypted. Encryption takes long to do and it also might slow the performance speed of your laptop, so you might choose to encrypt only the most sensitive files in your laptop.
Disable the Infrared Port. The port is for transmitting data and is not the method routinely chosen by most users. But did you know that someone sitting across the room from you could actually browse your files via the infrared port without you even knowing it? You can disable the port in the BIOS, or simply cover it with a piece of black electrical tape.
Back up your data before you travel. If some unfortunate circumstance occurs, your data can be retrieved by you. You could store all your data on a disk (encrypted and password protected, of course) and travel with an "empty" laptop. Remember to keep the disks on you and not in your laptop case! And watch out for metal detectors at the airports. Alternatively, you could send ahead your disks and retrieve them when you arrive at your destination.
External Laptop Security:
Cable Lock. You never know when it becomes necessary to leave your laptop unattended if even for a minute or two. Get a cable lock and use it. Make sure you tether it to something very sturdy and immovable.
Docking Station: At your office, many people you don’t know may pass through. You never know which stranger might want your laptop. A docking station can be permanently fixed to your desktop and it locks the laptop in place. If you can’t have a docking station, get into the habit of locking it in a drawer when not in use or when you have to leave the work station. You wouldn’t leave your wallet on your desk when you leave, would you?
Airports are a prime location for thieves to snatch your belongings in seconds. Obviously, never leave them unattended. Carry-on, never check your laptop. There’s a risk of it getting lost in the airport luggage system. How can you secure your data while traveling? One company in particular, Absolute Software, a Canadian-based company, has developed software that can trace a lost or stolen laptop and even delete the data with a remote device. Another company in Colorado, Otter Products, makes durable carrying cases that are crushproof, water resistant, drop-resistant and securely locked for traveling.
In summary, you could virtually turn your laptop into a mini Fort Knox if you took advantage of all the security options available. But I hope this article has instilled enough paranoia in you to incite you into taking necessary precautions to insure the security of your laptop and subsequently your private life! Taking heed to simple security measures on a regular basis will become as habitual as putting on your seatbelt when you get into the car. When security measures are in place, you can then lighten up and go about your day worry-free.
PC or Mac? A Big Decision for Your Business
When purchasing new desktop or laptop computers for your business, there are a few important decisions to be made. These include which exact features you want in a computer, as well as which manufacturer you wish to purchase from. The most fundamental decision of all, however, is whether your business should use a Windows-based PC, or a Macintosh.
The primary benefit of buying a Windows PC is the mainstream worldwide popularity of the Microsoft Windows operating system. For well over a decade now, these computers have been top-of-the-line in terms of software compatibility, with most application developers thinking about Windows first and Mac second. That’s why, generally speaking, you’ll find a lot more business-minded programs that work with PCs than with Macintosh machines.
In terms of speed and performance, however, Macs do have some definite advantages. In terms of graphical editing, video, and multimedia, for example, Apple’s Mac OS computers are known to perform extremely well, often making more efficient use of memory and processing power. Macintoshes do have quite a number of profound strengths, but it’s their low market share (about 10%) that can render them a less-than-perfect solution for those seeking flawless compatibility with mainstream business software.
Overall, the decision of Mac or PC rests solely on what functions you value most. It’s a good idea to look at numerous models of both types to determine which machine is best for your company’s unique purposes.
Spyware Remover
Spyware invades your privacy. It is generally any software that invades computer systems mainly for advertising purposes, secretly gathering information from computer users then sending it back via Internet connections without anyone’s knowledge or permission, no less.
What happens is that spyware applications are most often packaged or bundled in with shareware or freeware programs as hidden components. So when you download programs from the Internet, you get the entire package, spyware included. Then once you install and activate the package, the spyware goes to work, monitoring activity of the computer users on the Internet, and sending the data back to home base.
Spyware Protection
Some Internet service providers (ISPs), like Earthlink and America Online or AOL are offering their own spyware protection built right in with the service packages. And there are a variety of adware and spyware removal tools to give your systems spyware protection, in budgets for all ranges from free on up.
Free Anti Adware
One of the top companies on the market today offering a no-cost solution is Lavasoft. They offer a free anti-spyware / anti adware download called Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition that can scan your hard drives, RAM, Registry, even external storage devices. It detects unwanted advertising, data-mining and tracking traces left to work throughout your systems. Simply download, install, activate and clean out your systems to get your privacy back.
Recent upgrades to this software include extended memory scanning that is an in-depth process now. The cleaning process of your system includes Code Sequence Identification technology that scans for unknown elements in your systems, an extended Registry scanning that now checks multiple-user set ups and more. The softare will also rid users of scumware, parasites, dialers, some trojans, malware and browser hijackers.
Adware Anti Virus and More…
Computer users can get help with readily available anti-virus, adware & spyware removal tools, often via instant downloads. You can at least install no-cost applications on a trial basis to see what you think. Then continue use regularly with paid or free versions. Popular tool choices, listed in no particular order of preference, include:
- Hitman Pro
- SpywareBlaster
- AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
- Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware
- Spybot - Search & Destroy
So take charge and protect your privacy. Don’t let unwanted invasion enter and remain in your computer, sharing your personal information over the Internet with unknown sources. Fight back with an army of tools designed just to help you!
Security is the Number One Issue Online
It should be a legal requirement for your ISP to protect every surfer, provide spam filtering that actually works and a defence against phishing that is more than a warning letter reminding you that emails asking for passwords should be deleted, but its not.
If you surf it is your responsibility to protect your online security. Especially if your connection is a wireless one.
You have no more important tasks before attaching yourself to the "World Wide Web" than the installation of a safe browser, firewall, block list and an anti-virus solution. You should also have a hosts file, and you should have made at least basic changes to the default configuration of your browser. The pitiful offerings that came with your Operating system are Dodos and should be considered as dead as them. Patches are continuously being introduced to the main interfaces and they always come too late.
You should be provided with the basic tools and information to have a good grasp of what is needed to survive in the tangle of bad websites, unscrupulous coders and thieving parasites that inhabit certain parts of the Net. The fact that you don't is, in this author’s opinion, scandalous. Secondly, the large number of sites offering "free malware, adware, trojan and virus detection" reflects the shortcomings mentioned above. Of course only the download and scan are free. When, and I mean when not if, these "free downloads" find something bad you will be invited to pay for their removal. Doubly scandalous as the very best solutions are available completely without cost.
So, which defences do you need and which do you need to replace? The firewall that is part of your OS, if you should be so "lucky", is lame and leaks like a badly designed nappy and should be discarded with the same haste. A similar fate should befall your browser. And one of the greatest ironies of our time is that the average user has to go online to get a decent anti-virus solution, privacy protection and, most importantly, a fully functioning firewall.
You should know that the criminals who create botnets have, to hand, the total list of addresses assigned to all the ISP’s in the world and they own such powerful computers and connections that your machine will be compromised inside 3 minutes of your being online. It takes longer than that for even a seasoned, read scarred, net veteran to assemble, let alone download, the necessary tools to prevent disaster. For disaster it most certainly is if you are caught with your pants down and some idiot has your number and has infiltrated your computer before you have your shields up.
They can prevent you from even visiting an anti-virus provider’s website. They ensure that their trojan code is hidden from your investigations and then utilize your CPU power and connection speed for their own ends. They riddle your hard-drive with spurious nonsense and defeat an intelligent attempt at their removal. In the wink of an eye your once clean machine is less powerful, your internet connection is slower and your software, including your personal files, in more danger than when you plugged it into your phone line.
Please have a CD, with some tools on it, to install immediately after you put the Operating System on your computer and before you even think about instant messaging your friends to tell them that you are back after the bad guys trashed your previous setup. The best free tools, and this time I mean totally and completely without cost, are available at my main website http://freesecuritysecrets.com Download the latest versions, at a friend's house if need be, and learn how they update themselves to remain one step ahead of the very bad people who would hurt you if they could.
How To Prevent Spam On Your Internet Forum Board
Why spammers spend their day infesting forum boards with useless threads, and how you can keep your forum board tidy from this.
Spam in forum boards consists mainly in two activities, that are the following ones:
• Spam Threads
• Spam Member Profiles
Spam threads are new topics in which spammers put lots of links, usually pharmacy drugs and sex related, in order to obtain links for their websites and gain some traffic from the search engines.
This activity, apart of being illegal, it is totally deprecated because it promotes website that may potentially sell dangerous products, scams or could even bring to phishing sites.
Moreover, letting those links stay alive on your forum board may let your pages on being penalized, if such links are categorized as “bad neighbours” from the engines.
Last but not least, users seeing too much trash on your pages won’t return on your site anymore, and you will progressively lose traffic along with having your content quality drop to nothing.
For such reasons spam prevention is essential in order to keep your forum board tidy. Therefore the main question is: how can you achieve the goal of preventing spammers infest your forum board?
First of all, you will need to moderate your board by yourself or having some dedicated moderators in order to delete spam threads when these appear. If you are using PhpBB you should find a hack to add a thread report feature so to make your regular users help you in the spam prevention task.
Also, if you want to avoid people to sign up just to put their spam website on their profile to be shown, you should activate the email confirmation on your forum script. Both PhpBB and vBulletin are supporting this feature.
Manual activation of the accounts from the forum admin may be an idea, but this would slow down new memberships and could be an unsustainable extra work from your side.
You could even remove the possibility to add a website on your members’ profiles but this could limit your legit users, and you want your community to have all the benefits you can give them.
A good solution may be to remove the live links from profiles and the member list, and this can be easily done with manual modification of your forum script. It is easily feasible on PhpBB and vBulletin as well.
If you don’t know how to do this, you can contact a professional forum promotion firm and make them do the job for you. For instance, my company is doing such jobs for the public.
8 Things to Consider when Buying a Laptop Computer
1.) The ports. You should make sure that laptop has lots of USB ports for devices such as printer, mouse, flash drive, digital camera, etc. If your laptop does not come with many USB ports, you will need an USB hub. If you plan to connect your laptop to a TV, you will need an s-video port.
2.) CD/DVD. Most of laptops come with a CD writer\DVD reader drive. If you want to copy DVDs, you will need a DVD writer drive. At this time the maximum speed for burning a DVD is 16X.
3.) The hard drive. The speed of hard drive is measured in rpm or Rotations per Minute. Try to find a laptop that has 4200rpm or 5400rpm. A laptop with 40 Gigabytes is sufficient for an average person.
4.) The memory. Your laptop should have at least 1 GB of memory. However, you can get a notebook with 512 MB and work with Windows XP. You should avoid a laptop with only 256 MB of memory.
5.) The processor. You can choose between Intel and AMD. At the moment, Intel has the best processor for a laptop called the Core 2 Duo. The speed of processors is measured in Gigahertz. The bigger the number, the faster the processor is. There are also Dual-Core processors. It means they can process two things at the same time. As a result, the power of the processor is doubled.
6.) Size. You should choose a smaller screen if you carry your laptop a lot. Typically a 14.1 inch screen is considered small. A 17 inch screen is considered big. A 17 inch screen is heavier and use up more battery life. You can get a 15 inch or a 15.4 inch.
7.) The warranty. Each laptop computer should come with one year warranty from the manufacturer covering only defective equipment. You can also get an extended warrantycovering any accidents you may have.
8.) The brand. Average brand of laptop is Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer and Compaq. The better brand of laptops is Sony, Toshiba, Alienware and IBM-Lenovo.