How do you boil a frog ?

Interesting Thiggy. These are 3 excellent programs. I ran Prosecurity for about 3 months which is not very long I know but nothing of interest showed up during that period. Every so often I load up NOD32 or SuperAntiSpyware and they also never show up adnyting. The Hardware Firewall I like and consider to be an essential.

Question: when did your programs last show up a nastie ( cookies not included) ? Do you recall how you let this nastie onto your system and could it have been avoided by simply taking more care ?

It may well be that such and such a program is lite enough not to notice ( alone) but my attack or criticism is not against individual programs per se but more against an attitude which says I don't understand what I'm doing so I will install a program. As I really don't understand what I'm doing I will install as many programs as possible.

Provided you are "safe" surfing I would argue that the 3 programs you mention
may not be slowing anything down but ask are they really doing anything either ?

 

lol.... frogs had always been a coveted delicacies for us Mandarins!

Basically, i am into the 'minimalist' approach - a real-time non-hoaging AV, a standby for-safeMode-only scanner & an every-15days spyBot scheds. Never experience slowdown on my AMD64 laptop. Except for those AVs mentioned, the configs has been chuggin along for more than 18mths since... yet to be nuked!

 

Currently have nod32 2.7, Comodo 2.4, and ProSecurity 1.40 beta 3, all behind a NAT. I just dropped BOClean because it seems unnecessary. Comments?? |||

 

I think it´s mostly realtime scanners who slow things down, but most HIPS and firewall won´t. I really wonder if there are people out there who are using tools like Panda and F Secure IS, I´ve tried these tools and they are complete jokes.

 

And do your security softwares (scanners) FIND something
I ran KAV, NOD32, SAS and a few others : No Threats Found, but each of them ran more than 20 minuts to tell me what I already knew in advance.
That is 60+ minuts to run 3 scanners, I clean my computer in less than 2 minuts.

 

Erik I know what you mean when you say "I clean my computer in less than 2 minutes" but I wonder if there is really anything there to clean ?

The general assumption seems to be that as soon as a computer is plugged into the internet it is in a high state of risk and that infection, corruption, contamination, call it what you will, will take place within seconds, if not quicker.

I agree with you that it is comforting to know that every time a machine reboots any bad stuff that might have crept in is now toast BUT I have to question just how likely it is for a machine to become contaminated at all provided that the user follows some fairly basic rules.

 

Very unlikely if by "fairly basic rules" you mean using common sense and some security setup.

 

exactement

 

I don't want safe surfing and I don't want basic rules and my boot-to-restore is something I will never ditch, no matter what I do. That's why I also lock my data partition, when I leave my desktop and start surfing like a mad man.
I just want my newbie period back, when I was surfing unaware of any threat.
My problem in those days was that my computer was constantly infected and without any recovery solution at all.

I'm dreaming of this since I was member of SWI-forum, but I didn't know how to do this. Everything I did was a part of a plan to accomplish this dream, including buying a new computer and all this without having 30+ security softwares on my computer.
I still have doubts of doing a Windows Update or not, because I have an arrear of 80-90 patches.

 

Shhhh. Don't tell, but i don't patch What's the use?
Well, i do go as far as SP1 and i have install disks with SP2 integrated but rarely bother with them.
I used to experience more issues from $M so-called patches then with malware drive-bys on 98 and i never forgot all those lost hours & efforts. and i'm not about to fudge up a stable XP Pro in exchange for a ton of patches in a list 50 long or more everytime $M hits the panic button in another one of their marathon (announcements)

Times have certainly changed though for the better and of good measure in the user's favor now a days. Thanks to ISR's like FirstDefense as well as HIPS, sandboxes, virtualizations, Combos like OnlineArmor and others, and all sorts of reliable new security programs with which to choose your shield from

Not even $M own O/S can turn on you with any real threat to make trouble for you anymore like they used to, and thats a huge welcome relief.

It's nice that the user finally has the leg up and corner on confidence for a change while they do the squirming now

 

For outbound protection.

How do you lock down your data partition ?

 

Each time when I reboot, I have my original system partition back, patched or not, it won't make a difference and that's why I have doubts and asked myself "What's the use?".
I didn't do it yet, because Windows Update will increase the volume of my system partition enormously and that means bigger archives, bigger freeze storage, longer boot time, etc.

At SWI-forum, the qualified helpers always recommended Windows Update as the most important thing to do in order to avoid infections.
I never did Windows Update and my system partition has no infections and advanced+ scanners couldn't find anything either, which wasn't a surprise for me, because I remove any change during reboot.

 

Internet is still the same, it only has more malware and more bad guys and that doesn't change anything.

 

PC Security, because that was the only practical one, the rest was unpractical or a nightmare to use.
Two mouse clicks and a password for locking/unlocking and no waiting and no reboot.
It might be possible not to use a password, but I have to verify this first.

 

Regarding system/applications updates, I prefer to have as much security provided by the OS and then close the gaps/get the control with third-party apps. That's why I favour having a patched system, hardware DEP enabled, rational hardening and LUA (if possible).
Take that system (trusted base), image it, build a tripwire with integrity checkers (Tiny Watcher, FileCRC, whatever you like) and benchmark/forensic tools (RkU, IceSword, Autoruns, etc), add an isolation layer (sandbox), network access control (rule-based firewall), secure mailing/browsing (third-party apps, content filtering/whitelisting) and signature scanners for newly created/downloaded files and you're ready to go.

 

I agree with thiggy run nod32 you wont even notice it running.why would one take chances with no protection just to gain some speed and have A virus destroy your hard drive.even though virus protections are not 100 percent of catching a virus even 50 percent is better then no percent

 

I didn't want 50%, I wanted 100%.
I don't remove "viruses", I remove "changes" and any virus changes my harddisk somewhere, that's their weakness, viruses expose themselves by changing my harddisk. That's why I kill them all, even the undiscovered viruses and viruses that aren't born yet and without false positives.

 

I'll check it out. BTW, do you mean this one ?

http://www.tropsoft.com/pcsecurity/

 

Yes that's the one and use the icon in the system tray for the shortest way.
First tell PC Security what to lock.
Right mouse click on icon and then click "Security On" (lock) or "Security Off" (unlock) + Password. Any other method takes longer.

 

The software was looking promising until I read the following page which shows there is a back door:

http://www.tropsoft.com/order/pwdreset.htm

 

I know at least 2 antivirus programs that cause ZERO discernible impact on computer speed & responsiveness. Of course, what is true for my computer might not be true for yours.

But... yes, the height of security is to restore an image. I only wish I could do that same thing with bad stock market investments.

 

Hi all

Very interesting question (since I'm a FROG ! ) LOL

A well protected system is always a balance between security and usability.

I'm often astonished to see so much poeple relying on a huge collection of "heavy" security stuff instead of few lights ones...

For sure I prefer to have an AV (avast), few AS ( spywareblaster + Windows Defender (yes ), Look'n'Stop. I never used IE but Firefox with NoScript. I feed my HOSTS file with the MVP's hosts.

That's all. I have these security programs just like a car insurrance even I never had any accident.

Sometimes I have the feeling that I'm wrong and I start a long and boring procedure to check my system even it's working like a swiss watch...

This "paranoid" period always finished the same way: no root kit, no Trojan, no spywares, no virus. Nothings.

Did I'm right to say that a bit of common sense a.k.a Safe-Hex us the best security stuff: free and efficient ?

IMHO a complete collection of the best security programs will never replace the common sense.

WE the "cyber-frogs", we knows how to avoid pan full of water...

Best regards.

 

Hehe, this is why we would talk about the ability to use Prevx as a single solution, if the person wanted to.

It's not a lax attitude towards security or over-estimation of the product's capability, it's just that 99% of people outside of the forum got tired of this kind of thing almost immediately. Most people can't stand the slowdown, so when they go looking for a new solution, their first question is: "I'm tired of running AV+AS+FW+everything else. I'm looking for something that will detect all kinds of malware (realizing that nothing catches 100%). Something that I don't have to maintain and won't slow down my system. Can you do that?".

Often the only willing alternative for these folks is to run AVG and the Windows Firewall. They're also tired of big suites with undocumented functionality that causes problems that they can't work around (because they're undocumented).

The ironic thing is that when I'd help people clean off a machine, the huge amounts of apps wouldn't do that much to stop the infection from happening. Often times it was the folks that ran the most reasonable setups that were the best off. The decent apps would stop the bulk of it and just leave the person with one or two things to clean up, but the HIPS and such would be ineffective and just complicate matters.

Unfortunately there's been a huge disparity between the common wisdom in and out of the forums for some time. The theory is just all too often different from the practice. Then again, the issues between the average user and folks willing to spend time playing with computers has been an epic battle since the beginning. Those willing to invest the time just have greater patience and tolerance for technical issues than those that just want to check their email, watch YouTube, and go do something else. There's nothing wrong with either perspective, it's just that the technology is just now starting to find an adequate balance between both worlds.