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Report By Anti-Virus Maker Says Vista Can Be Hit By Malware…… Something Is Fishy Here….

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on May 20, 2008 by itnerd

As if Microsoft doesn’t have enough issues with its dead on arrival new Vista OS, a new report by Australian anti-virus firm ThreatFire says that Vista can be hit by Malware:

“In total, Vista suffered 121,380 instances of malware from its 190,000 user base, a rate of malware detection per system is proportionally lower than that of XP, which saw 1,319,144 malware infections from a user base of 1,297,828 machines, but it indicates a problem that is worse than Microsoft has been admitting to.”

Now this is usually the part where I bash Microsoft and tell you to run LINUX or buy a Mac. But I’m not going to do that this time. Why? Simple:

  • Malware is not defined anywhere in the article. I know from experience that some “malware” scanners tend to mark even cookies as malware. So one has to wonder if this is what the article is referring to.
  • How many of these “infected” computers had UAC and automated updates turned off? That would make it rather easy for “malware” to sneak onto a Vista machine.

These two items alone make me want to file this under FUD. I’m not a fan of Vista, but it seems that this report is simply a means to sell anti-virus software. This report also creates the impression that Vista is insecure. It might be or it might not be. This report doesn’t exactly do anything to confirm or deny that in any meaningful way. I’d love to see somebody outside of the anti-virus industry do a study like this so that we can answer this question once and for all. At least such a study would be impartial.

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Buy A Refub iPod, Get A Virus For Free

Posted in Commentary, Security with tags , on April 30, 2008 by itnerd

Ina Fried who writes for news.com decided to buy a re-certified iPod via buy.com to save a few bucks. But when he plugged it into his Mac, he got a nasty surprise. Namely the AdobeR.exe virus. He contacted buy.com who swapped it right away. When they looked into it further, they declared that it was an isolated incident.

Maybe it’s an isolated incident for them, but Apple had a bunch of brand new iPods ship with a virus on them back in 2006. Also, Best Buy had a bunch of picture frames ship with a virus recently as well. The fact is, anything that has some form of storage on it can have “unwanted passengers” hop on for a ride into your computer. The best thing that you can do is to make sure that you have up to date anti-virus protection (I recommend AVG Free for PC users. Mac users can try ClamXav) on your computer so that if you happen to be unlucky enough to have a product with a virus on it, you can at least stop it from doing any damage.

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Securing Your Windows PC – FOR FREE [UPDATED]

Posted in Products, Security with tags , , , on February 22, 2008 by itnerd

I fix a lot of computers for friends as well as “friends of friends” largely because a good IT Nerd is hard to find (plus they don’t want to take it to Geek Squad). One of the things I get asked about a lot is what they should buy to secure their Windows PC and keep it virus and spyware free. First of all, it costs NOTHING to keep your PC virus and spyware free. All you need are the right products:

  • In terms of virus protection, I recommend AVG. I’ve had situation where people have installed it in place of a commercial package and had it find viruses that those packages have missed. Oh yeah, it doesn’t slow your PC down at all. Highly Recommended.
  • In terms of software based firewalls, the Windows firewall is adequate. However it only deals with incoming threats. To be completely secure, you need a firewall that deals with threats that originate from your PC as well. For this purpose, I recommend Comodo Firewall as it is easy to set up and easy to manage. Best of all, it doesn’t get in the way of your day to day use of the PC unless it has to.
  • One thing you should do on a regular basis is hunt for spyware, cookies and anything else that might have somehow made it onto your Windows PC. For that purpose, I use two packages. The first is Spybot Search And Destroy and the second is Ad Aware. Both of these packages require you to run them manually (I run both once a month), but I find both to be highly effective in terms of keeping bad things off your PC.

Again, all of the products that I have mentioned are FREE. So you don’t need to spend money to keep yourself safe. Just make sure that you update them on a regular basis to ensure you’re adequately protected from the bad guys.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this article, I’ve stopped using AdAware as I find that Spybot Search and destroy is all I need.

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