Jump to content

Caldor

Experienced Members
  • Posts

    261
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Caldor

  1. glatxfront if you think about it logically, every time you perform a function on your computer you are trusting who wrote the program to do what you think it does, and nothing more. Since it is impractical to dissamble all programs you run where you dont have total trust the function is ok, or indeed in a worse case if a third party has modified it to contain malware without your knowledge, the most practical way to go is to operare in a lest priveledged mode. If something unexpected trips up, it can then be looked at in more detail. This is the cornerstone of basic computing security and one of the key reasons why Vista security is far better than XP.
  2. People who dont use IE7 on Vista can do the same through tools like sandboxie on FireFox. It isnt about who works where, its about practical solutions to our security and use of our computers.
  3. He's a well known security expert well before he joined MS. Besides, his methodology in his research is fully stated and is open for anyone to critically explore. I encourage readers to explore it rationally. Illogical arguments using fallacious reasoning isnt rational.
  4. This is a classic example why Vista security with out of the box IE7 protected mode is important. If people prefer to run FireFox or use a less secure operating system that doesnt support this, you should be running your browser in a sandboxed environment and certainly not with normal user rights.
  5. http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/...ity-report.aspx Vista continues to be more secure than XP, RHEL, Ubuntu and MacOSX. A combination of factors such as MS's secure development lifecycle (which Vista was the first OS to use), UAC and IE7 protected mode by default provide this. The Linux or Mac zealots claim that Vista hasnt been a malware target. Thats strange given over 100 million users on Vista and what really has been the focus of much attention from white hats and black hats alike. Thats in contrast to RHEL and Ubuntu having more security problems, when geeks see it as being largely uncool to hack Linux for exploits.
  6. Caldor

    Life on Mars?

    Does anyone remember the fiasco over the face on mars? And when they got a high resolution shot of it the conspiracy nutters even tried to suggest NASA had faked the new photo lol
  7. UAC cannot be "safely" disabled. Regardless of a users self appointed geekness, the only true way to tell what a program is doing is to dissasemble it. Since thats inpractical the best option is to run firstly programs you trust, and secondly to run your session in a least priveldged mode so that if someone unexpected is in the code it cant do any harm. Exploiting a power users ego and getting a trojan or whatever type of malware onto their system that way is a time honoured attack vector by black hats. If you get an unexpected UAC prompt thats a clear and practical signal something needs investigating.
  8. It just runs in wow32 on the 64 bit kernel. Works find though.
  9. Turning off UAC is a very bad idea. One of Vista's significant strengths over the old Windows OS's is not having users run as admin by default. This is one of the key reasons why Vista has less security problems than previous Windows OS's, as well as Mac OS X. CCleaner is an administrative tool, that performs administrative functions, and as such requires administrative credentials. MS bred a generation of users with poor computer use habits but atleast now they have changed their ways. Its time for users to adapt.
  10. Specifically I use Fellowes air duster which the is non flammable.
  11. I do this on my main workstation but dont bother for other stuff like my Untangle UTM gateway server. What I do is get a air duster can (compressed air in a can) and spray out the crud. Im careful to put a screwdriver into the fans so I dont wreak the bearings in them - the fan blade is locked while doing this. I find it keeps the cooling system in top shape and with modern cpus and gpus theres alot of heat being dealt with.
  12. Caldor

    MacBook AIR

    Meh, I hate apple. My wife loves them. To me, the interface is a PITA, the lack of compatability is a PITA and whats even worse, is the poor hardware they put in it. GPUs in particular are always behind where the market is, and Apple dont release updated drivers for new gpus so users can upgrade themselves.
  13. Theyd never get this into my country. To my mind, this is immoral.
  14. Many thanks but where specifically can I disable the AVG mailing spam without turning the email scanning off? I only want to see AV spam in messages being added if there is a detection thrown
  15. AJ, for reference on on IE7 low priveledge mode Vista: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/09/528963.aspx And, FF actually has more security advisories on it than IE7 for Vista. I'd say its MS that cant win - they loose by implementing legacy versions of IE that dont properly support CSS, then the whole world does work arounds in their web apps, and then they fix it, but all those work arounds break and MS cops it for changing things again. Professional web developers probably like it since it pays them more contracts for maintenance. FF once went over 20% global market share but it fell back down again. IE is used for the majority of global web traffic.
  16. Hi folks Since some of you recommended AVG and I already run a UTM gateway at home, I figured I'd look at AVG for my x64 Vista installs. Q: How do I get rid of the message spam added to emails? This is my only real issue with the product, well apart from it now being a true 64bit app and it using more resources than Esets Nod.
  17. As much as CCleaner is good, the defintions are not so good. Its worse on Vista than XP. To do it properly you will have to fully audit every application you run and come up with custom entries - some of the default entries have wrong detections in them so youll need to fix that too. There is also items missing from the inis to do with the operating system on Vista that should be cleaned. IMHO the way the ini's are being managed for CCleaner is holding back its potential.
  18. Actually, FireFox is used by significantly less people across the globe than IE. Even with FF3 gran paradiso, FF does not provide the same level of security as IE7 on Vista because it does not operate in a reduced priveldge mode by default. It forces uses to run it in a sandbox environment from a third party to match the default scenario with IE7. The real reason why MS is doing IE8 is that they need to update the CSS support to properly comply with CSS standards. This is a double edged sword however as many web deployments have coded around it and now it will have to be recoded to cope with MS doing it right. They cant win!
  19. Caldor

    DVD Ripper

    dvdshrink wont work with a whole bunch of copy protection methods. Its years old and is no longer developed. DVD43 and DVDDecrypter are better, but are not updated as regularly as AnyDVD which is the most current fair use enforcement tool available. I use ImgBurn to burn, which I find more stable than ashampoo and not as bloated as nero.
  20. fdisk /mbr for older partition types will wipe it. Dynamic discs can be redone too but off the top of my head I cant remember that one. The new EFI firmware cant happen soon enough to get rid of the BIOS and old crap like this all together. Service Pack 1 for Vista adds EFI support.
  21. Windows groups services together so its not entirely "true" whats shown in task manager. Unix doesnt group its deamons together like that.
  22. MS has brought the refresh release candidate build of SP1 out of connect and into the public space - its build 17128.. If you already have SP1 RC, most of the new bits are installation fixes so its not too critical to come to this revision.
  23. Have a look at the reviews on the small net builder website. Personally I am totally over Consumer grade crud from the major networking guys. Bad performance (very few can handle many simultanoes wan connections for example), buggy firmware and waiting forever for new firmware just doesnt cut it. IMHO, a far superior solution is to deploy an open source unified threat management network appliance like some cheap hardware running Untangle. Version 5.1 is about to come out of dev build status and it has great hardware support. Matched to say a smart Linksys gigabit switch its the most secure, highest performance way for home networking.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.