Tips

Recently, a person I know (who shall remain nameless to prevent embarrassment) had his laptop stolen out of his car. Now, to his credit he had been faithfully backing up his data. Smart guy. He would back up all of his data weekly to a CD and take it home for secure storage. Good plan. [...]

Steve Gibson, creator of Spinrite and winner of the Third Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards in the Technology/Science category for his Security Now! podcast with Leo Laporte of Twit.tv, has just come up with a super-secure multifactor authentication system. Steve calls it “Perfect Paper Passwords” and you can read all about it on his web [...]

I get a lot of ”Ask the Geek” emails from people whose computers won’t shut down properly, either hanging up or rebooting endlessly. (Sometimes, nothing at all happens and you have to press and hold the power button.) Rather than trying to answer each question, I figure it’s time I made this tip available.
So, I wrote a [...]

The good folks over at Secunia have a nice, free, web-based tool to scan your computer for certain common vulnerabilities. I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on this before, as I get the Secunia alert newsletter.:
Secunia Software Inspector6 December, 2006 - Secunia is proud to announce the availability of the Secunia Software Inspector. Detect and update [...]

A friend of mine came up to me the other day and said, “I love your computer maxims, but I don’t have anything to worry about–I have all of my passwords stored on an encrypted thumb drive.” Of course, my retort was, “That’s a good thing. Where do you keep your backups?”
“On my external USB [...]

In Maxim #7, I said that data security is senior to physical security. While true, physical security is only slightly less important. Taking steps to prevent theft of your computer is common sense. Sure, encrypt your data to make it useless to a thief if he manages to steal your hardware, but make it as difficult as possible [...]

We frequently hear news of a laptop holding sensitive information having been stolen. Bad in itself, but the reports often note that the information was unencrypted. Doubly bad. Certainly, physical security is important — you want to do everything you can to prevent physical access to, or theft of, your computer — but data security [...]

In an effort to thwart removal efforts, the criminals who produce malware such as WORM_SOHANAD.AF have taken to disabling Windows Task Manager and Registry Editor. The technique isn’t new, but its use is on the rise according to SANS NewsBites Vol. 9 No. 53:
BotVoice-A… disables the Windows registry editor which makes cleaning up the mess [...]

I get questions all the time from clients over at Ask the Geek about using a mail client’s message preview feature. Opinions vary, of course, but for this geek, it’s a bad idea. In order to preview a message, it has to be opened or rendered by the HTML engine. Think about how a PC [...]

In my Fun Toy for Geeks post, I gave the impression that U3 technology is pretty cool. Opinions vary, as they usually do, but I have at least one major concern: U3 could be compromised and used to steal private information. All some hacker would have to do is hook into U3 so that it installs [...]

Not long ago, a fairly savvy fellow told me he backs up all of his critical data every night. I told him that was a smart thing to do and asked him if he was using CDs or an external hard drive.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that,” he replied. “I just make a copy of [...]

In How to Secure Your Computer: Maxim #4, I told you what to avoid when coming up with passwords. You want a password that is either unguessable or difficult to guess. By far, the most unguessable password would be a string of random characters like ‘Qt6W’{/b?@mn,QL”Q% and the longer, the better. You can get ready-made “perfect” [...]

I was at a client’s site today and had to change the computer name on a Vista PC to clear up a conflict. I found what is either a “feature” of Vista or a bona fide bug in the OS. When I tried to change the computer name from “Xyz” to “XYZ,” the OK button [...]

Over the last couple of months, Ask the Geek has gotten a spate of questions regarding XP problems that weren’t catastrophic, but which caused shutdown problems, CD ejection errors, and a myriad of other annoyances. Back in the Windows 95/98/ME days, when users would see “This program has performed an illegal operation…,” I would always scandisk/defrag first, [...]

In How to Secure Your Computer: Maxim #3, I stressed the importance of changing the default username and passwords of all configurable network devices. That’s good advice. But a weak password, one that is easily guessable, is almost as bad as no password at all.
For example, if you use a password that conforms to common [...]

Our cable company recently added broadband phone to their lineup, so I switched over from DSL. When the cable guy was done, I hooked up my wireless security appliance and tested the connection with my laptop. I was impressed with the speed difference. Then I hooked up the phone and tried it. It worked great. I [...]

In my previous post, How to Secure Your Computer: Maxim #1, I said that the best security measures are useless if you invite attackers into your PCs and networks. Several people have taken me to task on that statement, saying that they always practice safe surfing, never click on links in emails, etc., etc. I listened [...]