Firewall & banking

Just a couple of ideas to bat around. There is KNOS which I really don't know anything about: http://www.knosproject.com/

Safekey has a new version out that is really neat, I've enjoyed playing with it: http://www.aplin.com.au/

To avoid being pharmed out you can add your financial institutions to your Host File, that way you never use a DNS server.

I don't have that particular problem with Online Armor that you do, I have another one that they have not fixed now in over a year. I tried Outpost and liked it but found that the majority of the features are easier to use on OA, now if only they would fix those *$(@& bugs.

Good luck,
Acadia

 

How/When vendors listen to end users: When it has or potentially has a significant impact on their revenue..

You have plenty of more worthy competition to choose from.

 

Cathy- I noted that you use PowerDesk. I had formerly used it for a few years prior to the company being purchased by Avanquest. Since version 7 I noticed that a number of programs that I used started acting strangely- crashes, random errors, etc. When I upgraded to version 8 things got worse. I finally debugged one of these crashes and found that it was due to a dll that PD installed.

Upon further investigation I found that Powerdesk was pretty nastily invasive into various parts of the system. I did a manual uninstall and retried a few of the programs that I formerly used but had to delete due to past crashes. They now worked fine! I did find an excellent replacement for PD in Xplorer2; there is really not much difference between the 2 (as they are both based on the excellent but sadly discontinued Norton Navigator.

Actually there is some difference between PD and Xplorer2- the latter is $10 cheaper and the computer no longer has these random problems.

Ditch PD!!!

Erin

 

You've been given many good suggestions, but it may help you to know more about the "attack vectors". For online banking you want to protect your logon credentials, ie user name and password. Those can be grabbed by keylogger and screengrabber trojans so you want a security application that blocks these, such as Prevx SafeOnline, Trusteer Rapport or Zemana AntiLogger. Rapport and SafeOnline also protect against DNS spoofing. If your bank is supported by Rapport give it a try. A free one year license for SafeOnline is available from Prevx through FaceBook. You can read about it here:

http://www.facebook.com/safeonline

Another way to protect logon credentials is use dual authentication. My bank offers an option to send a text message with a unique code to my phone every time I login that I enter along with the regular password. This means that even if my password is stolen an attacker can't get access because he doesn't have my phone (well, it's highly unlikely he also has my phone )

I use a dedicated browser for online banking and I don't open any additional tabs during banking sessions (there is a possibility of cross-site attacks).

If you're generally using a Windows Admin account I suggest you create a limited "User" account just for banking sessions.

Since you have MBAM why not run a quickscan before every banking session?

 

Their attacks:
-Remote software vulnerabilities
-Malware binded to downloads

What they will do:
-Phone home logins from populer software storage
-keylog browsers and financial software
-Have a rootkit hide the programs that do it

What you do:
-Protect process memory of financial software and browsers
-Prevent software from hooking system calls
-Prevent software from propagating in the file system and registry
-Prevent loading drivers that can sniff traffic and hide processes and their actions

Software that is capable:
-Sandboxie
-AppGuard

You can also use an AV with a kewl heuristics engine and HIPS, maybe malware authors will be nice and have it detectable and not use remote exploits, rootkits, and binary obfuscation. .NET and VB coders bypass Heuristics, Signatures, and HIPS daily..

 

Have you already made your bid for the next presidential election?

 

Thank you everyone for all of your suggestions! First, I must apologize for my delay in getting back to you. I am subscribed to this thread so I will get emails about replies but apparently it doesn't work or I must log in more frequently than I have been doing because I didn't know I had new replies. I was just looking at the forum and noticed there were new ones to my question. I will certainly check all of your suggestions out. I have about one month left of Online Armor so I can try them and see which works the best. But, I can guarantee you one thing, and that is, I WON'T be renewing Online Armor. I've had this problem with it ever since I started using it and that's been about 2 or 3 years. I would keep renewing in hopes that they would fix the problem but they haven't and I know it's not just my system so this is it! I'm quitting Online Armor. Thanks again everyone!