Protect Your Computer from Invisible Threats

Do you think your computer is sufficiently protected? Think again!

I know what you are thinking. I have the best virus scanner in the world and I have never ever had a virus before. My computer must be safe, there is no need for further protection. Wrong!

I’ll tell you what the best antivirus tool on the planet is in a few moments. Read on.

When I started working with computers over 20 years ago my IT life was simple. We had big flubbering floppies, things took forever to load, the monitor had one color and a virus was a string of protein that made people feel crappy for a couple of days or weeks.

Then came along the computer virus.

A virus, as you probably know, is just a piece of software that is designed to do nasty things on your computer. It can be written for various reasons but no matter what the reason is, the consequences for you as a computer user can be devastating.

Fifteen years ago a horror scenario would be that you received a floppy with a boot sector virus, corrupting your entire OS. The only resolution was to reinstall everything.

Today that is not much different except that the viruses have evolved into high-tech software. The focus might be off the boot sector variants but the virus threat is still imminent. It doesn’t make my IT job any easier.

Types of viruses

There are many types of viruses. Boot sector viruses, program viruses, stealth viruses and polymorphic viruses to name a few. I’ll spare you the specifics but if you are curious lookup computer virus on Wikipedia.

Besides viruses there’s also a huge variety of malware. This is software that will throw ads at you while you are using your computer for example. Or it will simply annoy you by closing programs and things like that. Unlike a virus they usually do not have a viral component, it is just there to nag you or fake you into buying things you don’t need and want, like a bogus malware remover.

I should probably also mention Trojans. Although technically also not a virus it is a computer infection. A trojan opens up a backdoor in your computer to let other viruses and malware in.

Last but unfortunately not least there are rootkits. I see these appear more and more nowadays, even on computers that have virus scanner installed.
A root kit is a software that infects your system on a very low level. An attacker installs it on your computer by using an exploit (security leak in the operating system) or by an obtained password. Some rootkits target an OS; others target firmware, the core software that is build into the hardware. That makes a rootkit OS independent.

Rootkits do an outstanding job hiding themselves from your OS so it doesn’t get detected. And even worse, it could be very difficult if not impossible to remove rootkits!

There are different types of rootkits but their purpose is often to give a hacker privileged access to your computer. It does this by creating and hiding files, registry entries, network connections or memory addresses on the infected computer without the user ever knowing about it.

The big problem with rootkits is that even if you did find out about the rootkit and are successful in removing it, there is a chance that the changes it made are still there and undetectable.

The only way to be really sure you got rid of a rootkit is by reinstalling the affected OS or firmware.

Why should you care?

All viruses have one thing in common; they are viral. If your computer has a virus on it than it will most likely try to spread to your contacts. It will either send itself by email/MSN messages or any other form of online communication. Or it will infect your USB stick. There are numerous possibilities.

Viruses, malware or rootkits might also steal personal information from you and pass it on. Maybe it finds your credit card number and mails it to the virus writer or hacker. Or it will turn your turn your computer into a ‘zombie’ so that it can be used for illegal activities like spamming or DdoS attacks without you knowing about it. Well, that is until your ISP cuts you off.

If you are like me and participate in passive income opportunities you’ll surely want to keep your login details safe from preying eyes.

You owe it to yourself and your fellow computer users to keep your computer free of viruses, malware and rootkits.

How do you know your computer is infected?

The truth is that you don’t always know but sometimes there are some clues. Your computer might behave a little strange. It might not open up certain program, a dos box gives you strange errors, or your computer might be less responsive. Anything out of the ordinary might be caused by some sort of infection.

How to check?

There is no easy answer for this question but obviously a good virus scanner and malware scanner are a necessity. I recommend you also get yourself a good rootkit scanner. Kaspersky TDSSKiller works quite nicely for every level user and more technical users might favor RootRepeal or GMER. The choice is yours.

No scanner is 100% safe!

Any virus can be identified by its ‘signature’. But before a virus scanner can recognize the signature it has to be added to the signature database of that virus scanner. Long story short: viruses exist before the virusscanner can recognize them. So no matter which virus scanner you use it can’t possibly recognize every virus out there.

I know, there are some smart virus scanners out there with heuristic capabilities, but that is not a guarantee that it will find every virus.  

Another thing to note is that over time hackers always have found security leaks in operating systems, or new ways to infect a computer. The computer world is dynamic, things change all the time.

So what can you do to protect your computer?

Despite the above you DO need a good virus scanner because it will find 99% of the common viruses out there. You also need a good firewall but that is another article.

You can take a number of additional measures to increase the security of your computer.

Create and use an account without administrator rights

Unix and Linux people have known and used this since the beginning of the computer age. By default the user that is created during the installation of a Windows computer is an administrator.

If you are done installing your computer create an extra account with only User rights. Then use that account for your daily computer usage. If you do come across a virus (for example through an exploited website) then chances are the damage will be contained. As you are not an administrator the virus can’t alter any critical Windows files and it can’t write into system directories.

Use a Virtual PC

All modern Operating Systems have a Virtual PC option available. You can download the Windows Virtual PC for free from the Microsoft website.
Simply put a Virtual PC is an operating system within an operating system which is run in a window like any other application.
So if you are running Windows 7 you could run Windows XP inside a window.

The big advantage is that it runs in a controlled environment. So in this example, if you run into a virus when using your Windows XP then your Windows 7 is safeguarded from it.
Starting a Virtual PC is as simple as clicking an icon on your desktop. Every virtualized OS consists of only a few files. That is easy to backup as well. If your Window XP gets infected, restore the files and you’re good to go again!

Unix and Linux users have known this for a long time as a ‘sandbox’. It not exactly the same but you could say that a Virtual PC is a special kind of sandbox.

If you are visiting a lot of obscure websites, or are participating in a surf exchange, you might want to consider doing that using a Virtual PC.

Keep your computer up to date!

Kind of obvious isn’t it? Security professionals, including hackers, find leaks all the time. You have to keep up with the updates of both Operating System and Applications if you want to keep your computer as safe as possible.

What is the best antivirus tool?

I still owe you an answer. The best antivirus tool is common sense! A stitch in time saves nine.

If you get an email from an unknown person with the subject “I love you” don’t even open it. Just trash it.

If a friend sends you an attachment through MSN Messenger with a subject like “This is so funny, open to see” don’t open it. Just trash it.

If you visit a website and you see an unexpected Java app screen open.. close the website, empty the browser cache on your computer and don’t visit that website again.  And if you must visit it disable Java and JavaScript.

I think you get the idea here. Always use common sense. Use it to avoid being scammed, use it to avoid computer infections, use it to to set realistic goals for your business, use it in every day decisions.  Common sense is an advantage we have over computers and machines so use it every time you can.

In closing

There is so much to tell about computer security that it is impossible to cover every aspect. This article merely scratches the service of that topic. I hope it did give you an impression though about the threat out there and what to do about it.

What do you do to keep your computer safe? Please feel free to add and comment.