On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:27:39 -0400, "Mr. Arnold" <MR.
>"Jupiter Jones [MVP]" <jones_jupiter@hotnomail.com> wrote in message
>> Not quite true.
>
>> Windows Defender is to help protect against spyware and neither anti virus
>> or firewall do that.
>
>> There are 4 things needed to help keep the computer secure.
>> 1. Antivirus
>> 2. Firewall
>
>I agree with those two.
>
>> 3. Anti spyware
>
>I don't agree with that one, because all one has to do is not put his or
>herself and the machine in that position to have it happen. I haven't used
>any of it in years. All the stuff ever did was find cookies and the machine
>cannot be attacked by cookies.
I'm begining to agree with this less and less, as the line between
"nice" commercial malware and "nasty" traditional malware gets
blurred. Traditional av still often ignores commercial malware, which
is often no longer pretending to be "legit" (and thus easy to avoid or
remove), so the risk is increasing.
I still don't like to add an active "underfootware" scanner that does
what av does, but I would retain Defender, and to that I would add
Spyware Blaster. The latter does not run all the time, but confers
"static" protection by populating Restricted Zone, cookie kill-lists
etc. with entries for known "bad guys".
Note 1: There are 200+ fake "antispyware" apps out there, avoid them
all! Free "legit" ones include AdAware, Spybot, A-Squared and AVG
Antispyware (what used to be Ewido).
Note 2: At some point, and maybe still, some MS email apps would work
very slowly if there were "too many" entries in Restricted Zone, as
there would be if you actually USED this to block the large number of
malicious sites and banner URLs etc. that are out there.
>> 4. Keep Windows up to date (Windows Update).
>
>I'll agree with that.
>
>> While there is some overlap, all 4 are intended to protect the computer in
>> different ways.
>> Since they protect for different problems, this is not "layered
>> protection"
>>
>> Layered protection is more like a router adding another layer of
>> protection to the firewall.
>
>I look at as anything that can be put on the machine to protect it for what
>it's wroth.
>
>The 5th element you left out is below.
>
>But if he user doesn't have any common sense to practice safe hex, then
>every last bit of it equals no protection.
>
>The only thing that really protects against anything is the one sitting at
>the wheel and doing the driving and using the proper tools, looking around
>from time to time to see what's happening on the machine, because malware
>can go around every last bit of it.
Safe hex helps, but is undermined by unsafe UI (e.g. an Explorer that
hides file name .ext by default) and is bypassed by clickless attacks.
Most of the latter rely on exploitable code defects, hence the advice
to keep patched and use a firewall. But sometimes bad guys find and
use exploits before the good guys find and fix them, and sometimes a
yawning defect is left open because it "works as designed".
It can take YEARS to get a design defect fixed - just look at the age
of MS Office macro malware, starting before VBA and ending only quite
recently (well, becoming less common, at least).
Safe hex is like all these other tips; an essential part of defense,
but no substitute for a lack of any or all of the others.
>http://preview.tinyurl.com/klw1
Nice article :-)
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