Editor's note: Ex-hacker Kevin Mitnick came by his security expertise the hard way. In the 1990s, his electronic penetration of some of the biggest companies in the world made him a notorious tech boogieman, and ultimately landed him five years in prison.
Now free and clear, Mitnick has reinvented himself as a computer security consultant and writer. He travels the world teaching organizations how to secure their information in a world of corporate spies and younger versions of himself. He took a break from his jet-setting to share some practical security tips. Clip them and stick them on your parents' refrigerator or your IT administrator's white board.
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Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses, and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.
They can even use your computer to store data like stolen credit-card numbers or child pornography, or to attack another innocent home user or business from your system.
Here's my Top 10 list of steps you should take to protect your information and your computing resources from the bad boys and girls of cyberspace.
- Back up everything! You are not invulnerable. Catastrophic data loss can happen to you -- one worm or Trojan is all it takes.
- Choose passwords that are reasonably hard to guess -- don't just append a few numbers to a no-brainer. Always change default passwords.
- Use an antivirus product like AVG or Norton, and set it to update daily.
- Update your OS religiously and be vigilant in applying all security patches released by the software manufacturer.
- Avoid hacker-bait apps like Internet Explorer and disable automatic scripting on your e-mail client.
- Use encryption software like PGP (pretty good privacy) when sending sensitive e-mail. You can also use it to protect your entire hard drive.
- Install a spyware detection app -- or even several. Programs that can be set to run frequently, like SpyCop, are ideal.
- Use a personal firewall. Configure it to prevent other computers, networks and sites from connecting to you, and specify which programs are allowed to connect to the net automatically.
- Disable any system services you're not using, especially apps that could give others remote access to your computer (like Remote Desktop, RealVNC and NetBIOS).
- Secure your wireless networks. At home, enable WPA (Wi-Fi protected access) with a password of at least 20 characters. Configure your laptop to connect in Infrastructure mode only, and don't add networks unless they use WPA.
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How does that article remind us how bad IE is? It is basic info regarding computer security that can apply to any platform available. There is one mention of IE, which is to avoid it because it is targeted the most by hackers. To think you're safe for not using IE is very stupid. I'll extend that further and include Linux as well. If hackers wanted to target non-ms products I'm sure they could and would find many security flaws.
You should also provide a link to the original source when copying & pasting.
IMHO
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I been told never to use IE to use with with banking on line,or ebay.Anything where you have to use your credit card i use Firefox.
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I been told never to use IE to use with with banking on line,or ebay.Anything where you have to use your credit card i use Firefox. Probably a bit of scaremongering. I don't think banking with IE is any less safe than FF. As far as I know if your system gets compromised then it get's compromised and it doesn't matter which browser you use. I've been using credit cards etc through IE for about ten years and not known of any problems.
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which is to avoid it because it is targeted the most by hackers. To think you're safe for not using IE is very stupid. Sorry i titled the post wrong , this article was aimed completly at IE, and while i agree hacker/crackers could do it to any other platform if they wanted , at the moment they are not ( or havent been found out yet ) so it is safer using some thing like Firefox or Opera
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A lot of the banking sites I've used only work with IE, so options are limited.
Excellent advice from the OP though.
Only problem is, how many people will understand and know how to implement all points listed?
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Written by a Fire Fox fanboy
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Actually, the safest browser to use is Opera, not Firefox.
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Actually, the safest browser to use is Opera, not Firefox.
I always thought Avant was the best
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A browser is as safe as the person who uses it. The security of the browser means nothing if you have a keylogger on your system, or you give your bank details to a fake site
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I always thought Avant was the best Avant is just another version of internet explorer
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Avant is just another version of internet explorer
Is it? I know the AOL browser is based on IE well it was in 1993-94 ish but I thought Avant was a seperate entity altogether but inspired by Opera but only formed around IEs layout engine.
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Is it? I know the AOL browser is based on IE well it was in 1993-94 ish but I thought Avant was a seperate entity altogether but inspired by Opera but only formed around IEs layout engine.
quote from snapfiles.com....
"Avant Browser is a multi-window (tabbed) browser based on the Internet Explorer core"
avant now do a firefox based browser called Orca, but i think it might be still in beta stage
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sometimes whrn i close my pc i get a "cannot close" thing for a prog called card reader i aint got a clue what it is any1 else?
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As an alternative to all the stuff in the first post, you could just buy a Mac or run Linux.