Archive for the 'Beginner' Category

How to protect your mobile devices

Published by

June 8, 2006 in Beginner and Security. 0 Comments

Using mobile devices to store private data can be a big security risk in case you lose them and they are not conveniently protected. If you use these kind of devices you should follow some rules.

Password protection. You should use passwords or a PIN to access your device. This might be a very basic protection, but can stop casual attackers from accessing your data.

Cipher your data. Many mobile device include this capability built-in, but if yours don’t you should find some software which you can trust.

Use a firewall. If you need access to Internet you should use the same levels of protection as at home, so use a firewall to avoid attacks.

Use device lockdown functions. Many mobile devices include some way to wipe its contents remotely if someone steals it. Be sure to have copies of this information before wiping it.

If you don’t follow some simple rules your information might fall in the wrong hands.

F-Secure Online Scanner

Published by

madelman

May 17, 2006 in Beginner, Security and Virus. 1 Comment

If we have to check one computer for viruses and we don’t have any antivirus at hand, F-Secure Online Scanner may be a good option, as it allows you to scan your files without installing any software in your computer.

You only have to browse to its page and download an ActiveX control which will scan the computer searching for viruses. You will need to use with Internet Explorer, as this is the only supported browser.

Another service I like to use is VirusTotal, which offers free online analysis of files with 23 different virus scanners, although in this case you can only scan individual files one at a time, but it is very useful in case you are suspicious of a file and want to test it throughfully. As no antivirus is 100% reliable, checking the file with so many different scanners may guarantee better results.

Anyway, it’s always a good solution to have a resident scanner which avoids viruses even being written to your disk, even less getting executed.

Chain letters

Published by

madelman

May 15, 2006 in Beginner, Email and Security. 0 Comments

With some regularity, everyone receives in our inbox some e-mails sent by someone they know where they try to warn you against some kind of really dangerous virus or asking for collaboration in a project to help a poor kid,…

These e-mails are known as hoaxes and, although they are send with a good intention, they are almost always false, a kind of urban legend spread through Internet.

You can spot this kind of e-mails because they say you will have a big loss if you don’t forward them, they are not signed, they promise some presents from a company or offer some difficult to believe information.

Some examples of these kind of messages:

The Make A Wish Foundation, has agreed to donate 7 cents evertime this message is sent on.
If you forward it to 20 friends, you will receive the brand new Ericsson R320 WAP-phone.
DO NOT RELY ON YOUR ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE. McAFEE NOR NORTON CAN DETECT IT BECAUSE IT DOES NOT BECOME A VIRUS UNTIL JUNE 1ST. IT WILL BE TO LATE THEN. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT OPEN THE FILE!!!

These e-mails have all been extracted from Break the chain, a site dedicated to recopilating them, so you can know if an e-mail you receive is a hoax or not.

You should never forward this letters to your friends, because they are very annoying, clutter up your inbox and many times, they can be used to get e-mail addresses to spam them. If your friends send them to you, you should tell them not to do it and why is it bad, redirecting them to Break the chain if necessary.

Instant messaging security

Published by

madelman

May 4, 2006 in Beginner and Security. 0 Comments

While many people have become used to e-mail being a source of potential problems (spam, viruses, phishing,…) most of them are not so cautious when it comes to using instant messaging applications.

Although the problem is not so big as with e-mail, attackers are switching to IM to evade the filters we are using when dealing with mails. Instead of spam, we might be receiving spim (spam + IM). Luckily, most of this programs allow us to block messages from unknown senders. This is really recommended just in case this attacks get more common.

Also, viruses which used e-mail to distribute themselves are turning into instant messaging to spread themselves, sending the files as if they are coming from someone you know and infecting you when you open the received file.

As with e-mail, the best recommendation is to keep your computer software up to date, from the operating system to the instant messaging programs. Also, take care with received files which were not requested, If you receive any of these files you can ask the sender if they send it on purpose.

Finally, the use of antivirus and antispyware will help you to keep your computer clean.

From | PC Doctor.

Phishing (II): how to protect

Published by

madelman

April 27, 2006 in Beginner, Phishing and Security. 0 Comments

Now we know what is phishing and how it works, it’s time to learn how to protect against it.

For me, the most important thing to be protected against phishing is incredulity. Simply don’t believe everything you receive by e-mail. E-mail can be forged very easily and the sender of the message might not be who it seems.

Also, take into account that most companies will never contact you by e-mail to ask for information. Well, there are some companies which do this, but if you follow these rules that won’t be a problem.

Don’t reply with personal information. If you ever get any kind of message from anyone asking for personal information, never reply to it. If you think this is legitimate it’s always better to call by telephone and give this data. Take into consideration the fact that e-mails travels as plain text through the net, so anyone can see it.
Don’t click in hyperlinks within emails. Although they might look legitimate, there are techniques for redirecting you to another site controlled by the attacker. If you think the mail is real and you have to input information, it’s better to open a new browser windows and and type the URL in the location bar, to make sure you are going to the site you intended.
Check for Secure HTTP. Once you have gone to the site, check it’s legitimate by looking at the location bar, checking it uses Secure HTTP (the URL begins with https). If it does, then check the certificate of the site by clicking on the lock that appears and have a look at the information in the popup windows to see if it’s the same that you expected.
Check your bank accounts and report to authorities. It’s really convenient to check your accounts from time to time to see if there’s any unusual or suspicious activity. If there’s something unexpected, you should better contact your bank and if they confirm it’s fraudulent, report it to the local autorithies so they can investigate the case.
Use antiphishing toolbars. This is a convenient software to know if a site is a suspect of being a phishing site.

You can either use Google Toolbar for Firefox which shows an icon indicating if a site is forged or not.

You can also use Netcraft Toolbar which can tell even the country where the server is located, so if you access an american bank and the server is located in Russia, you can get really suspicious.

With all these measures you should be quite safe against phishing.

The best free security tools for Windows

Published by

madelman

April 25, 2006 in Beginner, Security and Windows. 1 Comment

Many times people ask me what are the essential tools to install in a new computer to improve the security. I usually install everything I can think of, but sometimes I might forget something, so this list of best free security tools might prove very valuable. Sergio Hernando started it and I’ll try to improve it a bit with some comments about each program.

These applications are free (some are open source, others are simply gratis) and will improve greatly the security of your computer. Anyways, they are not infallible so you must take basic measures to protect your computer besides using these tools.

I usually prefer using open-source tools, but sometimes there is no useful open-source equivalent in some category, so a closed-source option must be used. Anyway, I have always found a freeware option which fulfilled my needs, so you don’t need to pay anything to keep your computer secure.

Continue reading ‘The best free security tools for Windows’

Are warning dialog boxes really useful?

Published by

madelman

April 24, 2006 in Beginner and Security. 0 Comments

In a really interesting post, Bruce Schneier tells that “lots of warning dialog boxes don’t provide security”. The cause is users don’t pause to read the content of the dialog box and act consequently. They only want the job to be done, so they click the default button or, if this doesn’t work, they click whatever button until it finally works (or at least, the dialog disappear).

This happens with every application. The most usual case is security warnings from bad SSL certificates.

Continue reading ‘Are warning dialog boxes really useful?’

Phishing (I): what is it?

Published by

madelman

April 24, 2006 in Beginner, Phishing and Security. 0 Comments

Although phishing has been in the rising for some time, there are still lots of people who don’t know what it is and how it works. This is used by phishers to steal data from innocent users for their own profit.

So, first of all, what is phishing? It’s a technique used to steal private data from the user by tricking him to give it away. This private data is usually passwords for sensitive sites, credit-card numbers or PIN codes for bank accounts.

How do phishers trick the user? The most common way to ask for the data is through email. Phishers send emails which look legitimate, usually mimicking the look of real ones but pointing to their own servers instead of legitimate ones.

Most phishing tells the users that account might have been compromised and they need to authenticate again to confirm the account. They give a link which looks like a legitimate one, but points to another site controlled by the phisher. This site also looks like the original one, as they steal images and layout from the legitimate one and upload them to another server.

So, when the user enters the username and the password in this site, the data gets stored in a database controlled by the attacker, who will be able to retrieve it later and use the data in his own profit.

This is an example of a phishing email I received:

The link seems to point to cards.fleet.com but, in reality, it goes to 4.60.21.232:34,a link which doesn’t work by now but which was under the control of the phisher.

Lately, the sophistication of this kind of e-mail has increased, every time looking more credible and using new techniques to trick the user, like emails looking like a question from a possible buyer from eBay which points to another site or even targeting e-mail to users depending on the bank they use.

In the next post, we will see how to protect against phishing.

Defeat hardware keylogger with SuperGlue

Published by

madelman

April 22, 2006 in Beginner, Security and Various. 0 Comments

We explained that a usual way to steal password is with keyboard loggers. This happened once at Sumitomo Bank, where someone installed a hardware keylogger to a computer and got some passwords which allowed him to transfer money to an account on his own.

The bank has opted for a low-tech solution to this problem. To avoid someone installing hardware keyloggers they have glued the connectors to the back of the PC with SuperGlue, so it’s not possible to unplug the keyboard and insert the keylogger.

It’s a known problem that to secure a computer where the user has physical access to it is quite difficult, so I would have opted instead for using dumb terminals instead of PCs, so the security only has to be implemented in one place, making it easier to control.

This is not always possible, as some systems can’t be configured to work with dumb terminals or might not be convenient for the business. In this case, the solution is to keep the PC case in a “secure” lock where it cannot be accessed by the users without permission.

From | Threat Chaos.

Recover your own instant messenger password

Published by

madelman

April 17, 2006 in Beginner, Passwords and Windows. 0 Comments

Most instant messaging applications have an option to remember your information (username and password) so you don’t need to input it every time you want to log on. This might be a handy feature, but it’s quite dangerous (as are all systems which remember your password, unless they are specifically designed for security).

If the applications remembers your password it has to store it somewhere, usually in a file in the disk or in the Windows’ registry. Most time it’s encrypted so you can’t look directly at it, but this encryption is useless as the program has to recover it some time, something other applications can also do.

The advantage of this is if you forgot you instant messenger password you can recover it easily. Just download MessenPass and it will find all the stored passwords for your user. Remember, only for your user, not for other users in the same computer.

The disadvantage is someone can get in your account if he has access to your computer when you are logged on, and can also recover the password.

The best option is to choose a good password and not to store it in the computer, inputting it each time we want to logon.

From | Quands.cat.

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