hi guys,

what's the views on net stealthiness. I haven't got a clue about firewalls and other security measures. What do people think I should do ? I've a feeling ppl are screwing around in my box. I've got an automatic internet explorer opening virus.
Any advice boys ?

Try unplugging the ethernet cable.

great, an easy answer.

Turn on Windows firewall, and get an anti virus and anti spyware. AVG free edition isn't bad.

Crack the whip.

Free Zone Alarm Firewall
Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite

As of 2005 , ZoneAlarms anti-virus and anti-spyware scanning was kind of slow but it was on a slower computer. The on-access scanning was just fine though.

ZoneAlarm has the best firewall I've ever seen.

As far as anti-virus goes , Norton Anti-Virus does pretty well , its on access scanning can get annoying at times , but it can be turned off or disabled temporarily.

Stay far away from Norton. I would also advise you to stay away from ZoneAlarm, but maybe that's just personal preference. The windows firewall should be good enough. I second AVG Free for antivirus, or Avast.

The Windows Firewall does not block outgoing communications from programs of any kind. ZoneAlarm can and does depending on your settings. How about a nice trojan sending out your passwords through the Windows firewall? ZoneAlarm watches programs for suspicious behavior in the registry , for hijacking programs and in other ways. It can alert and block potential problems before they are one.

Besides not shutting down properly all the time , there's nothing wrong with Norton Antivirus. Haven't had a computer virus in years and if I had I'm pretty sure NAV would have caught it. Not having any viruses is due to a good firewall and keeping away from malicious webpages.

Switch to Linux.

norton is crap, use avast or avg, a firewall, windows firewall at least, use a router, don't use internet explorer, always update your software.

if you chose to go linux, don't go down the gentoo route, actually dont go for linux on the desktop period.

I'd recommend Sunbelt Personal Firewall. It's great for the geekier people.

They havent maintained it as well as kerio did.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2007 is all I have to say.

Why not? I think Ubuntu owns Windows on all fronts.

On my current desktop I'm happy with XP, because I like to play lots of games like Halo and Morrowind. But games are the only reason I use windows, for example I'm putting Ubuntu on my laptop next Friday. Eff you, Vista! Stay off my laptop!

While I agree, I think somebody switching to Linux would be better off with Debian or something, I just found Ubuntu annoying.

My advice is to get a router or some other form of hardware firewall.

Ubuntu is quite the gaming machine.

Just to jump on the bashing bandwagon, when some shmuck calls in to Internet tech support and the issue is even remotely to do with thier firewall .... it's Norton. I don't even ask if they have 'a' firewall aymore. "Do you have Norton? Disable it. Everything's working now? Awesome, thanks for calling in, get security that isn't crap kthx."

Norton's firewall is obnoxious certainly. When it gets updates , sometimes it changes the order of the port rules it uses and/or seems to enable/disable certain rules for certain location configurations. When it is installed , its not even bright enough to block all incoming TCP/UDP/ICMP on all ports , it has to be set manually. And then maybe have to add an extra rule to make the loopback adapter work right.

My setup:
- Antivirus: Avast. Used to use AVG, but that interfered with some older software.
- Firewall: Comodo. Used to use Kerio Personal Firewall, but that didn't play nice with my laptop. ZoneAlarm had similar problems.
- Browser: Firefox with GreaseMonkey and Adblock Plus plugins (because I hate ads). Opera for some special tasks.

My setup, for the rare occasions when I boot to Windows (most of my gaming is on consoles these days):

Firewall: ZoneAlarm
Antivirus: Avast!
Web browser: Firefox with Adblock Plus and NoScript
Internet connection: Unplugged unless I'm actively using it

Oh, and:

May I suggest backing up your data, followed by a complete wipe and reinstall? Generally, that seems to take less time than removing the virus.

Edit: Wow, my first post in three months...

I don't use antivirus or any firewalls. Nobody bothers attacking me on dialup.

Actually, they can, but you may notice it happening before it can do harm.

"WTF? My connection went slow for no reason!" a reconnect later "There! Fixed!"

- Grooben -
Of course they do , if you had a firewall maybe you'd notice.

a firewall?! but i just installed windows 95!

Yeah, anyone I know that I see Norton's on their computer...I smack them repeatedly! It makes everything slow and usually screws up more than it fixes/prevents.

To le_y_mistar:
What is your problem? All you seem to post about is not using Linux and especially not Gentoo... Are you secretly a Bill Gates alter boy?::);D8-)

I think Norton has steadily declined over the years. I still use Norton Systemworks for keeping my registry and shortcut links tidy. It's also handy to give all the disks a quick chkdsk before I defragment them.

Three months? I haven't seen you for ages.

Well u guys talked me into it.

I just installed Spybot Search & Destroy, AVG Anti-Virus, and I'm downloading ZoneAlarm right now.

I feel safer already.

Anivirus: none.
Firewall: pfSense
Browser: mostly Konqueror, a little Firefox.

I just installed Zone Alarm for vista and it crashed the computer, BSOD. I restarted and it immediately crashed again, so I restarted in Safe Mode and uninstalled it. Voila.

And my computer has never crashed before...

I use my Install of XP in VirtualBox once in a while, and it has no protection, but it also doesn't have any viruses.

- Grooben -
Vista is still pretty new. They should be coming out with a service pack for it fairly soon , PC Magazine online talked about Vista SP 1 Beta in testing recently. So maybe ZoneAlarm will work better for you then.

As far as your computer crashing , did you get a stop error? Always write down what it says , then you can look up the code and find out what happened.

That's funny, Vista is getting SP1, and XP is getting SP3? (or 4, cant recall what its up to) all around the same time. Infact it looks like they put more resources into the XP service pack

It's 3 for XP. I haven't heard much of XP's SP3, so I'm not sure if it has more or not. From what I remember, it's basically SP2 with all the patches that came out since then (which alone is doubling the size of SP2...)

I hear it actually improves the performance of XP considerably.

One thing I hope they fix in XP is that sometimes it will randomly just go slow. None of the drives are blinking or making any noise, the computer has been going for a while, etc... and it just slows down for about 10-20 seconds -- you look at processes, and system idle process is at 90% -- still slow... why?

Hope they fix that.

Oh, don't worry about that slowness. It's just Microsoft collecting private data about you to see if you are associated with any undesirable elements of society. Like homos, buddhists, atheists etc...