PROTECT YOUR PC (the once and for all, best way to protect yourself online)

[Ahkei]

dear lord i made some1's sig again!!!!! oh noes!

Haha, I'm in 2 peoples sigs!!....I know. I'm tough.

[Raype]

dear lord i made some1's sig again!!!!! oh noes!

Looks like it happened once more. Oh noes!

[Josh]

From just what the first post in this thread has I'll give it a sticky.

[Monkey Masher]

OMG lol i havent been using a AV just nortan internet security(which i haven't been controlled by anything, but has this annoying pop up FROM nortan) and when i installed AVG i found a giant list of trojans on my comp 47 and counting(im still scanning).

[Monkey Masher]

lag, norton isn't bad as long as you have a nice rig, cuz apparently alot of people complain about it being a resource hog. this pc i'm on is a standard one, and NAV doesn't slow it down one bit. avg is interesting though...its free, updates alot, etc. and apparently picks things up that aren't even viruses. at least thats what my nephew's dad says. he canned NAV and installed avg...a few programs that i installed for him, which were basic stuff for ripping dvd's, avg said they were viruses lol that was funny when i heard it so how reliable is THAT.

Its a resoure hog when it scans(which lasts a long ass time) and slows down your performance considerably

[Lead Head]

i use avast and teh gay SP2 firewall, and ad-aware, my routers got a built in firewall. i tried spy bot search n destory, it didnt find anything like ad-aware, and i use teh firefox and teh opera IE is teh gay

[X-EvansBasher-X]

If you want to have the definitive (and really easy) way of getting spyware/malware/virii off your system, try this thread at one of my favorite sites. Once you have a grasp of what software they use (all of which, I might add..is 100% freeware) then you can avoid probs in the future. Good luck. Don't worry about putting me out of a job, there will always be more lusers who will need support.

[CryixDijonrit]

This is coming from someone who is very paranoid.

First and foremost, if you're using Windows XP, switch to Windows 2000 professional. It doesn't have a lot of the crap Windows XP has and has pretty much the same functionality.
Install the latest service pack (SP4).
NEVER do anything ActiveX or web-installed. That is just asking for it. NEVER connect to Microsoft under ANY circumstances; Windows Update lets them do whatever the heck they want to your computer. Use Autopatcher 2000 for the updates instead. That utility also has a bunch of security related registry edits - I personally enable them all except for the NTLM hash part.
Spybot Search & Destroy is a good utility, but make sure to know how to use the tools included with it and don't just scan your computer and think you're done.
HijackThis does whatever Spybot S&D doesn't do in the spyware department.
Disable Autoplay - This will come in handy, say, if you're playing Sony music CDs.
Use something like nLite or XPLite to disable the following:
Remote Registry, Windows Tour, Internet Explorer, Java Virtual Machine, VB Script, Windows Automatic Updates, Windows Update Manager, all IIS services, Outlook Express, and Outlook Express stationery.

For a firewall I would recommend Agnitum Outpost Firewall, since it allows you to set up your connection in a true "default deny" fashion.
Get rid of any Microsoft software made after Windows 2000 that you can - anything after that will not be self-contained and discreetly open ports, etc. Virtual PC is an exception; there are various other PC emulation utilities out there.
Don't use Microsoft Office, use OpenOffice.
Don't install Windows Media Player. Use WMP 6.4, Media PLayer Classic, and VLC Player.
You should have a goal of being able to type in "netstat /an" in the command prompt and seeing something like the following:

C:\netstat /an
Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
C:\

This means that nothing's listening. So, not only will you have a firewall, but you'll have an empty fishhook on your computer - there won't be any Microcrap to hack. To remove the listening ports you mostly have to remove services, although some may still remain - look around on Google on how to disable those ports. Be especially concerned about disabling NetBIOS. grc.com's "three musketeers" can also help you here, especially DCOMbobulator.

For a browser use Firefox and Opera. NEVER use IE under any circumstances.

The only services I have that start up with Win2k are DHCP Client, DNS Client, Event Log, Infraed Monitor, Network Connections, Plug and Play, Remote Procedure Call, Windows Management Instrumentation, Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extension, and Workstation. The solution is to disable everything that automatically loads up with your computer that is not any of those, and leave everything that didn't in manual. The services that loaded up with Windows should be in Automatic. Refer to Black Viper's service analysis if you want to know more about what the services do.

A good security site that hardc0regamer didn't mention is www.insecure.org - TONS of good utilities.
Another one is www.sysinternals.com - Look for RootkitRevealer and TCPView (the latter of which is more convenient than netstat)

Personally, Kaspersky AV basically destroyed one of my Windows XP installations. It may be that iStream thing that it uses. However, I am also hearing that you should just test programs with something like Virtual PC and look for virus activity, and you on't even need an anti-virus. Currently I'm using Norton (as independent reviews have shown this to have the second highest detection rate behind Kaspersky), but am wondering how freeware anti-viruses stack up.

Oh, and never use your real, burned-in MAC address. Always use a fake one. You can change that in the Windows Registry. Mine is the default one for Virtual PC

PeerGuardian is good to use although I'm personally not too worried about torrents on this tracker. Now that I can post I might actually make torrent comments :O

And I found it fun how I ran the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer on this computer (Currently Windows XP, but not much longer) and it wouldn't work since I didn't have the "proper" services enabled

This definitely isn't complete but is a good start. Does anyone know of any independent reviews of free anti-virus software, and registry scanning software? Or any vulnerabilities or flaws in my system? (and sorry for my poor organizational skills )

[Panda Man]

This is coming from someone who is very paranoid.

First and foremost, if you're using Windows XP, switch to Windows 2000 professional. It doesn't have a lot of the crap Windows XP has and has pretty much the same functionality.
Install the latest service pack (SP4).
NEVER do anything ActiveX or web-installed. That is just asking for it. NEVER connect to Microsoft under ANY circumstances; Windows Update lets them do whatever the heck they want to your computer. Use Autopatcher 2000 for the updates instead. That utility also has a bunch of security related registry edits - I personally enable them all except for the NTLM hash part.
Spybot Search & Destroy is a good utility, but make sure to know how to use the tools included with it and don't just scan your computer and think you're done.
HijackThis does whatever Spybot S&D doesn't do in the spyware department.
Disable Autoplay - This will come in handy, say, if you're playing Sony music CDs.
Use something like nLite or XPLite to disable the following:
Remote Registry, Windows Tour, Internet Explorer, Java Virtual Machine, VB Script, Windows Automatic Updates, Windows Update Manager, all IIS services, Outlook Express, and Outlook Express stationery.

For a firewall I would recommend Agnitum Outpost Firewall, since it allows you to set up your connection in a true "default deny" fashion.
Get rid of any Microsoft software made after Windows 2000 that you can - anything after that will not be self-contained and discreetly open ports, etc. Virtual PC is an exception; there are various other PC emulation utilities out there.
Don't use Microsoft Office, use OpenOffice.
Don't install Windows Media Player. Use WMP 6.4, Media PLayer Classic, and VLC Player.
You should have a goal of being able to type in "netstat /an" in the command prompt and seeing something like the following:

C:\netstat /an
Active Connections
Proto Local Address Foreign Address State
C:\

This means that nothing's listening. So, not only will you have a firewall, but you'll have an empty fishhook on your computer - there won't be any Microcrap to hack. To remove the listening ports you mostly have to remove services, although some may still remain - look around on Google on how to disable those ports. Be especially concerned about disabling NetBIOS. grc.com's "three musketeers" can also help you here, especially DCOMbobulator.

For a browser use Firefox and Opera. NEVER use IE under any circumstances.

The only services I have that start up with Win2k are DHCP Client, DNS Client, Event Log, Infraed Monitor, Network Connections, Plug and Play, Remote Procedure Call, Windows Management Instrumentation, Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extension, and Workstation. The solution is to disable everything that automatically loads up with your computer that is not any of those, and leave everything that didn't in manual. The services that loaded up with Windows should be in Automatic. Refer to Black Viper's service analysis if you want to know more about what the services do.

A good security site that hardc0regamer didn't mention is www.insecure.org - TONS of good utilities.
Another one is www.sysinternals.com - Look for RootkitRevealer and TCPView (the latter of which is more convenient than netstat)

Personally, Kaspersky AV basically destroyed one of my Windows XP installations. It may be that iStream thing that it uses. However, I am also hearing that you should just test programs with something like Virtual PC and look for virus activity, and you on't even need an anti-virus. Currently I'm using Norton (as independent reviews have shown this to have the second highest detection rate behind Kaspersky), but am wondering how freeware anti-viruses stack up.

Oh, and never use your real, burned-in MAC address. Always use a fake one. You can change that in the Windows Registry. Mine is the default one for Virtual PC

PeerGuardian is good to use although I'm personally not too worried about torrents on this tracker. Now that I can post I might actually make torrent comments :O

And I found it fun how I ran the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer on this computer (Currently Windows XP, but not much longer) and it wouldn't work since I didn't have the "proper" services enabled

This definitely isn't complete but is a good start. Does anyone know of any independent reviews of free anti-virus software, and registry scanning software? Or any vulnerabilities or flaws in my system? (and sorry for my poor organizational skills )

I know a much easier way: Use Linux... lol i run adaware and microsuck antispam about once a month, defrag once every 3-5 weeks, let AVG run when it wants to, and use registry mechanic about once a week. And im running great!

[CryixDijonrit]

I know a much easier way: Use Linux... lol i run adaware and microsuck antispam about once a month, defrag once every 3-5 weeks, let AVG run when it wants to, and use registry mechanic about once a week. And im running great!

Haha...you're the fourth person who's told me to use Linux now. Personally I like to use open source utilities as much as possible (and windows 2000 is in its own way, wink wink). But unless you're explicit in what software is running it won't be going as fast as it could be and you could have vulnerabilities you don't know about. New Microsoft software is badly designed and needs to be removed - The software isn't self-contained and often is difficult to uninstall. And System Restore doesn't work for crap either. Now just imagine how bad Windows Vista is going to be.

[Luckey]

Norton may seem like the best in the market right now, but since it's the most popular, many viruses direct themselves to bypass it.

[StevieP]

i like computer associates
i got a free subscription as long as i stick with verizon dsl

and since ive started using firefox
i havent got any spyware
only a few tracking cookies
but i still scan

o ya i also got a nice hardware firewall integrated with a router
that plus zonealarm and i think my comp is pretty safe
except for the fact that its running xp
lol

[aratorn]

The best way to protect yourself is just plug out your network cable

[skakidd]

ive got the whole norton bundle always on
ad-aware with ad-watch constantly running
protect-x (excellent for stopping pesky brats on irc)
peerguardian
the default ms/ie garbage
i run a trend micro online scan everyweek
i do a webroot window washer wash everynight.
and just incase something goes wrong hijackthis is ready to go like a swat team.

it all keeps my bad stuff filled computer running smoothly. and norton does make my pc unusable while its scanning but i leave it running at night cuz it takes about 4 hours and i wont be using my pc then anyway.

[pgfreak]

whats the best real time (live) spyware/adware protection? I had ad aware, spybot search and destroy and spyware blaster and out of all of those I think spyware blaster is closest to real time but it isnt. I also run Avast! ... Is Windows Defender the best one? I just got Spyware Terminator for real time now