If you didn't have an antivirus or antitrojan scanner, what would you use?

At a very minimum ?

Hardware firewall, ShadowUser/Deepfreeze for normal computing, Online Armor for installation tracking (when you have SU/DF switched off) and for 'temporary' security whilst SU/DF are active <ie wouldn't switch OA off>, plus WormGuard for emails <ones from friends that may be infected, as I delete any from people I don't know>

Also standard broswer hardening stuff, windows updates etc.

 

You mean also without the option of running multiple online virus scans? I wouldn't use Windows at all. I would stick only to my secured OpenBSD machine (instead of using both a Windows machine and OpenBSD).

If I did have the chance of using online virus scans, though, maybe that wouldn't be much of a problem... I would use a Windows machine with Deep Freeze, Process Guard or Anti-Executable, a personal firewall AND a hardware firewall or an external OpenBSD machine acting as firewall, SnoopFree privacy shield, and the commercial version of Tripwire for Windows (or something similar), and if that's a possibility, an anti-spyware applications like SpySweeper...

 

Hah... not really. All Linux distributions have had remote exploits. Linux distros, especially the ones most commonly used for desktop use, need a lot of patching to be secured, and there are often patches you have to apply right out of the box to make them resistant to remote exploits. Of course, Spyware on Linux is unheard of and the concept of "drive by downloads" seems impossible for Linux (or any UNIX machine). But both Linux and Mac are hardly "totally secure". Even OpenBSD, widely regarded as the most secure operating system available to the public, has had remote exploits (really one in 8 years, but...). Call me paranoid, but as an OpenBSD user (and fan, I would say), I still feel the need to take a week or so to tighten up everything possible before using it regularly.

 

Does shadowuser pro work good in systems with dual raid 0. I read somewhere that software like goback in raid configurations dont work at an advantage but hurt the system instead. I read that the errors were in terms of delayed reads and writes.

dja2k

 

Does Harden-it interfier with any aspects of the firewall. I don't use outpost , but I do use look n stop.

dja2k

 

i believe Chris12923 has shadowuser and a raid 0 config. ill assume that it should work fine. the datasheet (pdf) does mention "No alteration to the file system or disk structure", "FAT,FAT32,NTFS basic and dynamic disk support", and "SCSI,ATA and IDE hard drive support" but if ur not sure u can also ask in their forums.

hardenit doesnt interfere with ur firewall but it may cause internet or network sharing problem depending on what options u select but i cant exactly confirm anything. recently my net connection has been kinda shaky/faulty but i cannot determine the root problem.

 

One of the "goback in time" type of programs such as GoBack, FirstDefense, RestoreIt, DeepFreeze, etc. Every time I quit surfing the net I would "goback in time" to a point before I started surfing. That would pretty much insure 100% that I would never catch anything. Only problem with this is that I would never be able to create any Favorites or Bookmarks since they would be also lost, so I would probably create a Word document or Excel spreadsheet on another hard drive or diskette in order to store important URLs. That would be some work but as far as I can figure, would be completely secure.

Acadia

 

Thanks for the replies, now all I have to find out is if it works good on a raid 0 setup before I start trying out shadowuser. Also I heard about deep freeze, which one is better in your opinion? Also some people use both, how is that even posible, wouldn't they interfier with each other?

dja2k

 

Uhm... I use Deep Freeze and I find it absolutely essential for my Windows PC. But I don't agree; if you're not protected in other ways, the system would be completely secure (or, rather, clean) only when you start afresh at the boot (providing the program is not "crackable" during the "frozen" configuration, i.e. that really nothing could be written permanently, ever).

Nothing would ensure that your system can't catch, say, a system spy that reads all your mail and sends the data to a remote server while you're connected to the Internet. Sure, the spy would be gone at the reboot, but the important data would have been sent already.

 

I really don't know about the combination of ShadowUser and a raid 0 set -up but you can trial the program for 15 days and see. About the differences between Deep Freeze and ShadowUser, they are in principle very similar but IMO ShadowUser is superior in many ways (and more expensive- 25$ and 69$ respectively).With ShadowUser you can select almost any file you like to write to disk WITHOUT exiting the 'frozen'(shadow) mode and you can reboot in 'frozen'(shadow) mode if you need to (to trial a newly installed program that and requires a reboot).
@TNT . If you use an Antispyware program and a good firewall you would be protected from privacy leaks.

 

Is there anything in particular I should know about shadowuser in terms of some files are mandatory to be writen and etc....?

dja2k

 

With DF & SU, the registry is protected...many things are stored in the registry, including IE Favourites, Trusted Zones, Security settings, Window size etc etc...

SU does allow for Excluded Folders, so you can exclude your email folder, your work folders, and your gaming folders etc...but you can't exclude the registry (nor would you want to).

 

Well installed the trial versiion of Shadowuser Pro to see if it works fine with Raid 0 and so far with the testing I have done, it works great.

dja2k