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[edit] Windows XP Computer Security and Protection

By: ChevronX
Published: January 20th, 2007

Windows Update

One of the first things to help secure your computer is to use Windows Update, which is an online service supplied by Microsoft to help secure your operating system against the latest exploits!

Windows Update can be found at the web address of:

http://www.windowsupdate.com

Alternative ways to get there is by Opening Internet Explorer and click Tools, Windows Update.

If you are offline, it will ask you connect to the internet so if your on dialup then enter in your Username and Password and click connect.

When you first go there it will ask you to install special Windows Update plug-ins for Internet Explorer to allow you to use the Windows Update website efficiently, so go ahead and click Ok.

Then it will redirect you to a page, asking whether you want to do a Custom or Express install, Click Express it is by far the easiest, Custom allows you to remove and add things to the update, such as other tools Microsoft has provided, and Express already has the most critical patches selected. A dialog box should pop up, and you just click Install to have Windows Update download and install the latest patches for your system. If an update wishes you to install it alone, and needs a restart, then click Ok and restart the computer once it tells you too after it has installed the patch and do the previous to download the rest of the patches.

Automatic Update

With Service Pack 2 (which can be obtained through Windows Update if you don't already have it) of Windows XP, Microsoft perfected the ability for your computer to download the latest updates automatically, while your computer is connected to the computer. I will show you how to configure Automatic update the easy way.

1. Right click My Computer (Either on the desktop or the Start Menu) and click Properties.
2. Click the Automatic Updates tab.

Here it gives several options, you get to Turn it Off/On, Schedule the updates so it downloads the updates when you wont be using the computer, Just notify you that updates are available, or Download the updates and choose when you want to install them. Before the updates take affect, you need to shut your computer down.

Windows Firewall

Another thing to make sure you have activated is the Windows Firewall, which is dramatically improved with Service Pack 2. A firewall is an application whose aim is to block access to your computer from the outside, such as Crackers and others trying to gain access to your system. It is also useful to block applications from access the Internet, especially if you don't know what the program is, it could be an application that has gained access to your computer and is about to send all your email and documents to its creator.

Generally Windows Firewall is sufficient to use, and doesn't require you to download any third party software and any patches that are needed are rolled out in Windows Update.

To configure and make sure Windows Firewall is activated you can do the following:

Viruses and Spyware

Before we do anything else, I want to point out the difference between Viruses and Spyware.

Viruses are created with malicious intentions, such as destroying all your data, or better yet opening it out so all the world can read that CV of yours. Viruses are have still a big impact on the world today, as its ability to spread itself through the internet has cause a lot of hassles, fortunately the updated Virus scanner can do wonders to keeping your computer free.

Spyware is advertising and is commonly used to hijack your Internet Explorer homepages, it also has a major impact on the performance of the computer, by slowing it down quite a lot and even 30 infections can sometimes do the damage of 30,000.

Luckily for us, there are utilities to protect our computers from both Viruses and Spyware!

Virus Protection

There are many applications for Virus protection out there, but the ones I recommend and are sure are legit and not Spyware or viruses in itself are AVG Free Antivirus, and an excellent NOD32. I do not recommend Norton Antivirus or Norton Internet Security at all it has cause a lot of main stream problems, with dramatically slowing your computer down, and it doesn't offer the excellent protection that even the free AVG Antivirus does.

[edit] AVG Antivirus

This application can be found at this web address:

http://free.grisoft.com

Make sure you click Program download, the file should be avg5$$$$.exe not u$$$$.bin ($$$$= Where the version number is, it changes with every update).

Once it has been downloaded, Run the file and it should launch the AVG Setup (It may take a few seconds).

Most of the steps are just there for if you want to customise it, I recommend keeping it at default, so click Next, right through till you get to Finish and then click that. AVG should now be running, in the System tray (Where the clock is), and AVG Settings wizard will come up, just click your way through it yet again, if for some reason AVG does not appear in the System Tray, then restart your computer. To update AVG, right click on the dull AVG icon in the system tray and choose, Update, Internet it will get updates form the internet and installs them. If you needed to install updates manually, such as if you have the update file on a floppy disk or CD (u$$$$.bin). Then you choose manual and point AVG to where the update it stored. It should then say it found an update and install it for you and that AVG icon should become nice and colourful to indicate it is up to date.

AVG when fully updated, will automatically scan incoming files and emails for viruses but you cannot be too careful. To run a scan, right click the AVG System Tray Icon and click Test Center. It will open the Test Center, click Complete Scan and it will begin the Virus scan of your computer. Just a reminder to update the antivirus first for maximum protection.

Spyware Protection

I know of two great spyware scanning software, Adaware SE, and Spybot Search & Destroy. Both are excellent and free, and when used together can remove most if not all that your system can be infected by.

[edit] Lavasoft Adaware SE Personal Edition

This application can be found at the following web address:

http://www.lavasoftusa.com

Once you have downloaded the setup file, and then run it and it will launch the setup. It is again, simple to install, by clicking next or I agree to the dialog prompts, till you reach the end with check boxes. Untick all checkboxes to avoid confusion and click Finish.

The Adaware SE icon should now be on the Desktop, double click it. It will tell you that your definitions are old, so you know what you are going to download; definitions are updates with the latest list of Spyware and the ability to remove them. Click Connect to allow it to connect to the internet and download and install the latest definition. Once it has downloaded and installed the definition file, it will take you to the Adaware SE main screen. You have to scan for Spyware, it won't do it automatically for you, so I recommend letting it scan during the night. To scan click Scan Now, make sure Perform Full Scan (You can choose Smart System Scan to scan for Spyware in the most logical places where it usually resides, but if you want full effect, go Perform Full Scan) then click Next and it will begin scanning.

Once it has finished scanning, it will display its results, to remove the Spyware form your computer Right click a result, for example "Tracking Cookie" and select Select All Objects, to select all the Spyware the scan found on your computer. Click Next, a dialog window will come up, asking if your sure you want to delete the Spyware, select Ok, and then it will remove the Spyware, and then take you back to the main Adaware Screen. There may be Spyware that cannot be removed, because it is currently protected, and it will then show a dialog asking whether you want Adaware to run at next restart. Click yes, so when your computer restarts it will run Adaware before the Spyware has a chance of protecting itself, click Scan again and it will scan and be able to remove the Spyware.

[edit] Spybot Search & Destroy

This application can be found at the following web address:

http://www.safernetworking.org

Spybot Search and Destroy another great Spyware scanner software and ran with Adaware it is usually picks up a few that Adaware hasn't found.

Double click the setup file to launch the installation. Just follow the prompts and installing is a breeze. Once it is installed, run it. If you have Adaware on your computer then Spybot will detect this and bring up another dialog. Just click your way through that.

Updating Spybot is easy, at the main spybot screen, there is a Search for Updates button, click it, it will then reach out to the internet and show you a list of the latest updates it can download, you don't need the help ones, or tea timer but select the rest and click Download Updates. It downloads and installs the updates.

To scan, click Check for Problems, it will then scan and then display the results, to remove Spyware, click Fix Selected Problems; all the results will automatically be selected.

Just a reminder to update your Spyware database before your scan so you can make sure you don't miss any!

There are other Virus and Spyware software out there, even Microsoft have released an application called: Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware.

Luke Murray (ChevronX)

lukejmurray@gmail.com

http://www.chevronx.com

[edit] Getting the Most Out of Your Connection Speeding Up the Internet

By: Cooper
Published: January 20th, 2007

I'm sure you've seen the ads about "speeding up your internet". The products they try to sell you will vary from pure snake oil, to often rebranded free download managers. The one thing the offered products tend to have in common is that for the most part they simply do not work. Interestingly enough, there are programs out there that will give you a very real increase in the perceived speed of your internet connection. And best of all, it doesn't have to cost you a thing.

By far the most effective way to speed things up is to install a caching proxy server. When you're browsing a site, a large amount of images shown to you are repeated throughout that site. Clicking the back button tends to reload everything aswell. When you're running a proxy server, you're only grabbing that data once, and every subsequent load comes from your proxy server. Since that proxy server is on your local network, or even your own computer, it can respond much faster than the internet site, transmit the data much faster, and not use up any internet bandwidth, leaving more of it available for other stuff. I can highly recommend the Squid Proxy for all UNIX users. Windows users could give WWWOFFLE a go.

Another great way to speed up your internet is to run ad blocking software. A lot of you are probably running some form of ad blocking software already, but the key question to ask is 'how does it block the ad'. A popular ad blocking method involves using a .CSS to hide the ads from you. While that might improve your browsing experience by not having ads in your face all the time, it doesn't speed up anything as the ad still gets loaded. It's just not being shown to you. What you really want is something that prevents you from downloading the ad in the first place. While you can do this in the browser, the best place to put your ad blocking is in your proxy. It's really easy to make Squid not load ads, and even provide a transparent image as a replacement so that leaving out the ad doesn't automatically mess up the layout of the page you're viewing. The free WWWOFFLE proxy I mentioned earlier can be set up to do a similar thing. And since we're on the topic of filtering, you can make Squid take out cookie requests from certain sites. So if you don't trust, say, Google with your searching habits, and given the fact that Google will work perfectly when cookies aren't enabled, you can tell Squid to kill those cookie requests Google's servers are sending to your browser.

Next up is DNS. Ever notice that when you go to a page, it says 'Looking up whatever.com' in the status bar at the bottom? This means your browser is trying to get the IP address of the server it needs to contact, and the DNS server is slow to respond. Setting up a caching nameserver can speed this process up incredibly. As with a caching proxy server, a caching nameserver will forward your DNS request to your ISPs DNS server for the first lookup, and cache the response. Any subsequent requests for that domain name will be served from the cache. It won't make much of a dent in the bandwidth you use because these DNS requests use very little data, but sites will appear to respond much faster. Unix users will probably want to use either BIND or DJBDNS. Those who run Windows XP or newer don't have to do anything. Windows caches all DNS responses for 24 hours by default. This however is a bit much. Most DNS servers on the internet update their data every 4 hours these days,so you might want to shorten these caching times. To do this, open regedit and find the

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNSCache\Parameters

entry. There should be a MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit key there. If not, add it as a numerical value. The value is the caching time in seconds, so for 4 hours that would be 14400. Another key you'll want to change is the NegativeCacheTime key. Windows by default not only caches succesful DNS lookups, it also caches failures so any temporary DNS problems automatically will last 4 hours on your system due to this caching. To turn off the caching of the DNS failures, set the NegativeCacheTime to 0. While you're in there, add a key named QueryIpMatching with a value of 1. By default, Windows will accept and cache any DNS response it receives, including those from machines that it never even sent a DNS query to. This is an obvious security issue with Windows. This setting will make Windows accept and cache only DNS responses from servers it queried.
For more on this, see:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c24621675.mspx

There's one last thing you can do, but this is pretty advanced. Using a Quality of Service, or QoS package you can do traffic shaping on your network. Many of you will know and hate QoS software because it's typically used to slow down bittorrent downloads, or othr similarly useful services your network provider doesn't approve of. However, it can also be used to give you decent throughput while browsing, a very low ping when gaming, and acceptable speeds on your bittorrent traffic. It does this by prioritizing certain types of traffic, and limiting other types to prevent them from drowning out the rest. On top of this it can be used to prevent the normally rather excessive buffering that's performed by your modem or router. As this really is for the more hardcore networks guy, I'm going to skip that subject for this article. If you're really interested though, read the Linux Advanced Routing and Traffic Control Howto, which
can be found here:

http://lartc.org/lartc.html

I've yet to find a free QoS package for Windows, so for the time being your Windows guys are sadly out of luck.

-Cooper