Tag Archives: software

How Highly Effective Malware Is Able To Infect Your Machine

Posted on by
Reply
Almost everyone now has anti-virus and anti-spyware software on their machine.  How then do so many people still get infected?  PC Magazine has come up with a list of 7 things effective malware does in order to infect and spread that the anti-virus companies have trouble with.
  1. Trick the user. Make them think the program is something they really want to run.
  2. Obscure your code. Use packers and other tricks to make the program difficult to analyze.
  3. Make it as light as possible in terms of size to make the moment of infection faster.
  4. Make it as stealthy as possible so as not to make the user suspect because 'my computer runs slow' or 'what is this process?'
  5. Have as many anti-debug and anti-vm tricks as possible, to avoid today's malware analysis automations. In the end, it will be detected but many hours of not being detected means more time to spread unimpeded..
  6. Make it as flexible as possible. The more tasks it can do, the more profit you can get (password stealing, spam sending, ddosing, click fraud, etc). Typically, it can even be updated to do different or better tasks.
  7. Manage with a bullet-proof Internet infrastructure for handling the malware operation. This is important, and sadly easy. There's more than enough countries and ISPs that don't care very much about people like you and it takes ages to shut down a malware site.
Unfortunately, the easiest of these is probably number1, as many user either aren't educated about security, or ignore all common sense and click on anything that pops up. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Malware

Popularity: 1% [?]

Remove Old Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Software

Posted on by
1
Often whenan anti-virus program expires, or fails to stop an infection, you will need to remove it to install a newer version.  Many people at this time run into the problem of their old software being corrupt and not removing.  Some anti-virus vendors supply useful "removal tools" for their software, but are often very difficult to find and sometimes require calling the company and waiting on hold. If you REALLY need to remove an anti-virus or anti-Spyware software off your machine for whatever reason, it just got a little easier. AppRemover is an all-in-one  removal program that lets you easily remove old, corrupt,  or broken Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware programs.  It will also let you remove Symantec Anti-Virus from machines without having to dig and find what password you used during the install. AppRemover

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tweak the Power Savings of Your PC to Save Money and Energy

Posted on by
Reply
LocalCooling.com offers an easy to use piece of software that will help you manage the power saving features of your computer.  With these features, you can save money by saving energy and helping the environment.  It's small and easy to use.  Give it a look. Tweak the Power Savings of Your PC to Save Money and Energy 418x60 Tweak the Power Savings of Your PC to Save Money and Energy

Popularity: 1% [?]

Have PrintScr Actually Print the Screen

Posted on by
Reply
The PrintScreen button on most computers is ignored.  People don't know what it does or how to use it.  On most computers hitting it just copies the current screen to the clipboard.  This allows you to paste it in a image editing software or documents, etc.  But what if you wanted to actually print the screen and not go through the hassle? Purrint is a little utility that sits in your system tray, and when you hit PrntScr allows you to click 1 button to either save it as an image, or actually print it out to your printer.  Very useful, quick, and lite on resources. Purrint

Popularity: 1% [?]

Free Protection

Posted on by
1

Anti-Virus

I still recommend AVG Anti-Virus Free Version for people who need anti-virus software. It's less obtrusive and slimmer than Norton or McAfee, updates automatically, and does a very good job of virus protection. Paid versions are unnecessary as this combined with Spyware Doctor below with prevent most infections someone is likely to run across.

Download: AVG Free Edition

Anti-Spyware

People are still having a hard time avoiding and preventing spyware from getting on their systems. Google has partnered up with PCTools and offered a free version of their effective Spyware Doctor software. I use it often at work and highly recommend it as a primary protection against spyware. Unlike AdAware or SpyBot that some of you may be familiar with, Spyware Doctor runs continually like an anti-virus to keep you protected.

Download: Spyware Doctor Starter Edition 5.0.1.201 freeware

Browser

Internet Explorer is an effective browser, but it is also insecure, slow to adopt, and not very customizable.  I prefer and highly recommend the browser FireFox for it's increased security and customization.  You can install add-ons to do everything from show the weather at all times at the bottom of the screen, to blocking ads, to increased functionality with your favorite sites.   Check out this site for why it may be a good idea to switch if you haven't already.

Download: FireFox Browser

Popularity: 1% [?]