Kit your PC out for free: No cost anti-virus software Discussion Area

thehound

Haven't noticed it mentioned here but Yahoo Anti-spy seems good at detecting spyware. Available free on the yahoo toolbar. Trouble is, for my PC it keeps on detecting a trojan that none of the other programs listed on this forum (that I have used) have managed to detect. It then says it has deleted it but on running again, the trojan is still there.
I'm using NAV, Ewido, Hijack this, Spybot S&D, Sophos anti-root kit, but none except Yahoo have detected it.

So my question is - are they all showing a weakness with: Trojan.Win32.StartPage.afs or am I missing something?

zax_2

it could also be a false positive. many of the lesser software will detect many pieces of code as malware, even though they are all perfectly kosher.

here is a post on a help forum that might help you

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118804

AlanR

SteveS suggested using a separate PC dedicated to internet banking, and Mcbazza an alternative approach using virtualization (VMWare). Here's a further option for those using a single PC, with its own pros and cons. For simplicity we'll assume that your normal web-surfing/email environment is Windows, though it doesn't have to be.

1. First of all get yourself a CD copy of Damn Small Linux (aka DSL). The software is free but if you don't want to bother downloading it and burning the CD, Linuxmedia or Tuxdiscs will sell you a ready-made CD for around £2 plus shipping. Or it's sometimes distributed on magazine covers, e.g. the current (December) PCPlus.

2. Whenever you require your secure, sanitized internet banking environment, shut down Windows and reboot the PC with the DSL CD in your CD drive. Assuming your BIOS options include booting from CD, DSL will begin to load. Early on you have to respond to a "boot:" prompt; here it's best to enter "dsl lang=uk" to get the UK keyboard layout. On my system the entire boot-up process takes only about 90 seconds, and it autodetects and autoconfigures all the important hardware such as the screen type, screen resolution, USB mouse and broadband internet connection. Despite its minimalist nature DSL has a full graphical desktop, user-friendly enough for most people.

3. Click on the Firefox icon and access your financial site(s). If all you're ever going to use is the browser, you don't need any special knowledge of Linux.

4. When you are finished close down DSL, remove the CD from the drive and reboot back into Windows as normal. That's all there is to it.

The reason this is provides a highly secure environment is that DSL is designed to boot directly into RAM - the operating system and all the applications - and run from there. Since the CD from which DSL and Firefox are loaded is a read-only medium, you are guaranteed a clean copy of both every time you start up DSL. When DSL is run in this way, by default it doesn't see your hard disc or any of the files on it, and doesn't have write access to the hard disc either, so there should be no interaction with your everyday Windows environment. (The read/write access permissions for the hard disc can be changed, but for maximum security it's important that you don't.)

I believe this is pretty much equivalent to using a second separate PC dedicated to internet banking, and it avoids the overhead of running a second machine. It's also arguably a lot simpler technically than the VMWare approach. My main reservation is that the standard release of DSL won't support all hardware configurations: for example I have a recently- purchased laptop on which I haven't yet got DSL to boot, I think because it has a SATA hard drive. (There's a new version, DSL-N, coming along which has a newer Linux kernel and should support SATA; however as that is still in a pre-release state I haven't tried it.) But if it does prove to run on your hardware, it's worth a try.

Regards, Alan

AdrianR_2

I agree AlanR with your idea, but it is worth noting that you get an instant connection on the internet if you have a modem router, however, many have USB modems and login details would have to be entered every time, assuming that the usb modem works with the linux drivers.

A

AlanR

AdrianR wrote:

I agree AlanR with your idea, but it is worth noting that you get an instant connection on the internet if you have a modem router, however, many have USB modems and login details would have to be entered every time, assuming that the usb modem works with the linux drivers.

A

Good point (I have a router, as you probably guessed). It would be perfectly possible to save configuration data in this scheme, but that means introducing a writable component which requires thought, as it is liable to compromise the clean separation between the normal Windows environment and the sanitized one. Also it's bound to make things a little more complicated for the user.

One possibility is to use a dedicated USB pen drive for this, which you remove whenever working back in Windows. But once headed down that route, one might as well put the whole compact Linux system onto the pen drive (DSL will install to a pen drive), then your secure environment is portable to other people's PCs as well.

If saving any data I'd be inclined to think about using Puppy Linux in preference to DSL. Puppy is much less good at auto-configuration than DSL -- so you have to do more work yourself the first time you load it up -- but it has more flexible options for saving your configuration once that's done.

Thanks for the feedback, Alan

Poppy9

Sorry for stupid question. When downloading zonelabs firewall do I want to run or save?

espresso

Poppy9 wrote:

Sorry for stupid question. When downloading zonelabs firewall do I want to run or save?

Well save it to a directory of your choice and then go to this directory after the download and run it.

AdrianR_2

Zonelabs firewall, remember windows XP has a firewall progarm inbuilt.

A

Woby_Tide

windows has a lot of things inbuilt, a lot of them utter tat. If you can put another firewall on other than windows then do so (and given the number of free alternatives on this thread there is no reason not to)

Poppy9

espresso wrote:

Well save it to a directory of your choice and then go to this directory after the download and run it.

I did it. I was having a blonde moment (and I'm not even blonde). I used Zonealarm on my old pc for years and found it great.