Exposure of new pc to internet in order to download AVG

judderman62

and use a browser other than IE

robt_2

judderman62 wrote: »

and use a browser other than IE

Never been a problem for me.

albertross_2

Since I used the word "dodgy", I shall clarify what I meant by dodgy, an infected site.., or a site with infected downloads.

If you go to download antivirus/spyware/rootkit first, with a firewall or router to protect against worms and exploits, then that's the best you can do to protect yourself. Patches should be on auto anyway, and will take several reboots to implement.

The_Gerbil

fwor wrote: »

There's plenty of good advice above but, to a certain extent, this thread perpetuates the myth that you are only at risk from visiting "dodgy" websites.

In reality, major threats like MPack and it's more recent derivatives have infected thousands of ordinary-looking, otherwise innocent websites. The effect is that they exploit PCs which are running unpatched copies of Windows and IE. Antivirus programs typically can't detect these sorts of exploit because of the way in which MS built IE into Windows.

IMHO, the highest priority is first to get all the OS patches up to date, and then to go and get AVG and a decent firewall.

Yes agree 100%. This leads to the more interesting question of

Chicken and egg/Catch 22 situation here. Can anybody advise whether its ok to connect a new, unprotected pc to the internet for the relatively short period which is necessary to download the latest OS and app patches.

I think there is a real danger that without a firewall/router that has no known vulnerabilities you could be hacked before you knew it.

I know the following quote is a bit old now but...

Sophos estimated that a new PC stands a 50-50 chance of being infected by a worm within 12 minutes of being connected to the Internet. (Other analysts, such as the Internet Storm Center, put the current average survival time at around 34 minutes.)

So I would say get a firewall, get os patched, get apps patched then worry about anti virus.

GreenNotM

Agree with Albertross and Gerbil - your pc can become infected when on the internet without a firewall - an infection can even happen by not browsing to any sites or using IE/FF etc, via port scanners - turn the OS's firewall on and ensure your router has a firewall

Chicken and egg/Catch 22 situation here. Can anybody advise whether its ok to connect a new, unprotected pc to the internet for the relatively short period which is necessary to download the latest AVG version (and other programmes like ad-aware)?

So answer is not safe to go on the internet without a firewall as protection, use the inbuilt ones.

The anti-virus will protect against bad files "landing" on your pc, not from port scanners making configuration changes to your PC - so hence the need for memory resident AV production, not just AV file scanners.

see the comodo thread about leak tests and port shielding links etc ..http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=608551

fwor

Gerbil: good point - I stand corrected. I probably place too little importance on a firewall first as all of my PCs sit behind a router and a hardware firewall.

If you had a PC with - say - a fresh install of XP SP1, and a USB broadband adapter then I guess there would be a significant chance that someone doing a port probe on you would find one of the holes before you had a chance to patch them all.

So yes - if you are pre-SP2 then getting a decent firewall as a first priority is right. From SP2 the Windows firewall is probably good enough until you have a chance to download a decent one.

P.s. Albertross - I didn't mean to misrepresent what you said about "dodgy" - it's just that some people incorrectly assume that "dodgy"="pron"!

GreenNotM

fwor wrote: »

If you had a PC with - say - a fresh install of XP SP1, and a USB broadband adapter then I guess there would be a significant chance that someone doing a port probe on you would find one of the holes before you had a chance to patch them all.

As OP has new PC, I was maybe wrongly assuming the PC would be latest OS - Vista or XP SP2 - and never even considered those usb things - as never see em as a "real" network devices :rotfl:

BillScarab

Personally I wouldn't worry about it if you're behind a firewall but there are a few options if you are worried.

Are you replacing an old PC? If so download all the security software on that anad burn to disc or copy to a USB drive. Or as someone suggested do it at work, or pop round to a friend's and borrow their PC for half an hour to do it.