How to Protect Yourself from Viruses 1
With viruses you never know where the next trouble will come from, but I have never had an antivirus utility in the startup menu of my computer. As for manual scanning for viruses, the last time I did this was about six years ago. Despite this seeming lack of protection, no virus has ever enjoyed the liberty of my system for more than five minutes.
Back in the days of MS DOS, I scanned my disk about once a year - and then only to ease my conscience. As you already know, the main sources of infection back then were BBS and diskettes. I did not use BBS, so there was no threat to my computer from that direction. As for diskettes, I would always scan any diskette, even one given to me by a close friend, for viruses before opening it. Friends simply may not have known that their computer was infected and might unwittingly have brought me an infected file.
Nowadays I do not use diskettes and do not exchange executable files with friends. I recommend obtaining all software from the original source, that is, from the official Internet sites. Only official sources can give a 90-percent guarantee that their products are virus-free. Of course, there have been incidents of well known companies inadvertently spreading viruses with their products. However, these are very isolated and rare cases and the Internet community detects and corrects mistakes of this type very rapidly.
Date: 2010-04-11
[Read more] [Security]
Super Scotch
At my old job, I wrote a program that printed barcodes and other information about merchandise on self-adhesive labels, which clerks then pasted on the product boxes.
Where am I going with this? To the fact that a self-adhesive label is very difficult to peel off something once it's stuck. At first, we used them to seal desk drawers shut in such a way that the labels remained unseen. From here we moved on to electrical outlets and, finally, to computers. Here, the first victim at our hands was the computer's power button, which we pasted over with a double, or even triple, layer of labels. Next came all floppy and CD-ROM drives and connectors on the back of the system unit (USB, LPT, etc.).
Scotch tape is even better for this purpose.. One time I used it to tape over the entire system unit of one of the users at work. This necessitated sacrificing a whole roll of scotch tape, but what a show it was watching him taking it all off! Seeing a system unit liberated from a roll of scotch type was worth all the trouble that went onto the exercise. This prank is particularly entertaining when there are no scissors or other cutting tools at hand to liberate the system.
My favorite, however, remains using clear scotch tape to tape over floppy disk drives. If the job is done neatly and cannot be seen, it will be difficult to figure out at once what is preventing the diskette from going in.
Date: 2010-04-04
[Read more] [Jokes]
Network Monitoring Program
Two days ago I uploaded a new version of my network monitoring program. The main features are:
- New feature to export log data to XML or HTML files.
- It is easier to create WEB page monitoring items.
- Now you can see network status messages in windows notification area: near to system clock.
- The program checks latest news from CyD Software Labs server and shows you a dialog box with news.
A new monitoring program is marked as Careful Observer - Network Monitor 2010 SP2. The next version is coming in 3 months. I thing it will be marked as Network Monitor 2011.
Date: 2010-03-13
[Read more] [Network]
Social Engineering
Social engineering is a hacker's most powerful weapon. It was used to pull off the most sensational break-ins and to spread the most notorious viruses. Recall the Anna Kurnikova virus, which spread when users received a letter in their mailbox with an attachment purporting to be a picture of Anna in her birthday suit. This application of social engineering was taking advantage of human weakness. I believe that the excessive curiosity of the male share, which is the larger one, of the Internet users who opened the attachment and infected their computers helped the virus spread.
Hackers are exceptionally good at finding weak spots in people and pressing them to acquire the necessary information. One area in which social engineering is used is in obtaining credit card numbers and other information with the help of believable email messages. A user receives a letter asking him for the account password because, for example, the bank's database malfunctioned. What do you think, although they had been explicitly warned by the bank's personnel to never reveal a password to anyone, quite a few users do?
Thanks to the exposure given to the issue by the media, Internet users are becoming more cautious with mail from unknown sources. It's becoming more difficult to convince someone to reveal a password in response to a letter purporting to be from the support service. Hackers, however, are not resting on their laurels and are constantly in search of new methods for exploiting human weaknesses.
Date: 2010-02-14
[Read more] [Security]
The best
- SQL Ingection on www.newspaperads.com
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- Critical SQL Injection (http://cshe.berkeley.edu/)
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