Computer Protection Basics

The same advice parents might deliver to young drivers on their first solo journey applies to everyone who wants to navigate safely online. The basics are the following:

• "Don't drive in bad neighborhoods."
• "If you don't lock your car, it's vulnerable; if you don't secure your computer, it's vulnerable."
• "Reduce your vulnerability, and you reduce the threat."

Below are some key steps to protecting your computer from intrusion:

Keep Your Firewall Turned On

A firewall helps protect your computer from hackers who might try to gain access to crash it, delete information, or even steal passwords or other sensitive information. Software firewalls are widely recommended for single computers. The software is prepackaged on some operating systems or can be purchased for individual computers. For multiple networked computers, hardware routers typically provide firewall protection.

Install or Update Your Antivirus Software

Antivirus software is designed to prevent malicious software programs from embedding on your computer. If it detects malicious code, like a virus or a worm, it works to disarm or remove it. Viruses can infect computers without users' knowledge. Most types of antivirus software can be set up to update automatically.

Install or Update Your Anti-Spyware / Anti-Malware Technology

Spyware is just what it sounds like—software that is surreptitiously installed on your computer to let others peer into your activities on the computer. Some spyware collects information about you without your consent or produces unwanted pop-up ads on your web browser. Some operating systems offer free spyware protection, and inexpensive software is readily available for download on the Internet or at your local computer store. Be wary of ads on the Internet offering downloadable antispyware—in some cases these products may be fake and may actually contain spyware or other malicious code. It's like buying groceries—shop where you trust.

Keep Your Operating System Up to Date

Computer operating systems are periodically updated to stay in tune with technology requirements and to fix security holes. Be sure to install the updates to ensure your computer has the latest protection.

Be Careful What You Download

Carelessly downloading e-mail attachments can circumvent even the most vigilant anti-virus software. Never open an e-mail attachment from someone you don't know, and be wary of forwarded attachments from people you do know. They may have unwittingly advanced malicious code.

Turn Off Your Computer

With the growth of high-speed Internet connections, many opt to leave their computers on and ready for action. The downside is that being "always on" renders computers more susceptible. Beyond firewall protection, which is designed to fend off unwanted attacks, turning the computer off effectively severs an attacker's connection—be it spyware or a botnet that employs your computer's resources to reach out to other unwitting users.

What is a Hacker?

~ Brian Harvey
   University of California, Berkeley

In one sense it's silly to argue about the "true'' meaning of a word. A word means whatever people use it to mean. I am not the Academie Française; I can't force Newsweek to use the word "hacker'' according to my official definition.

Still, understanding the etymological history of the word "hacker'' may help in understanding the current social situation.

The concept of hacking entered the computer culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. Popular opinion at MIT posited that there are two kinds of students, tools and hackers. A "tool'' is someone who attends class regularly, is always to be found in the library when no class is meeting, and gets straight As. A "hacker'' is the opposite: someone who never goes to class, who in fact sleeps all day, and who spends the night pursuing recreational activities rather than studying. There was thought to be no middle ground.

What does this have to do with computers? Originally, nothing. But there are standards for success as a hacker, just as grades form a standard for success as a tool. The true hacker can't just sit around all night; he must pursue some hobby with dedication and flair. It can be telephones, or railroads (model, real, or both), or science fiction fandom, or ham radio, or broadcast radio. It can be more than one of these. Or it can be computers. [In 1986, the word ``hacker'' is generally used among MIT students to refer not to computer hackers but to building hackers, people who explore roofs and tunnels where they're not supposed to be.]

A "computer hacker,'' then, is someone who lives and breathes computers, who knows all about computers, who can get a computer to do anything. Equally important, though, is the hacker's attitude. Computer programming must be a hobby, something done for fun, not out of a sense of duty or for the money. (It's okay to make money, but that can't be the reason for hacking.)

A Hacker is an Aesthete

There are specialties within computer hacking. An algorithm hacker knows all about the best algorithm for any problem. A system hacker knows about designing and maintaining operating systems. And a "password hacker'' knows how to find out someone else's password. That's what Newsweek should be calling them.

Someone who sets out to crack the security of a system for financial gain is not a hacker at all. It's not that a hacker can't be a thief, but a hacker can't be a professional thief. A hacker must be fundamentally an amateur, even though hackers can get paid for their expertise. A password hacker whose primary interest is in learning how the system works doesn't therefore necessarily refrain from stealing information or services, but someone whose primary interest is in stealing isn't a hacker. It's a matter of emphasis.

Ethics and Aesthetics

Throughout most of the history of the human race, right and wrong were relatively easy concepts. Each person was born into a particular social role, in a particular society, and what to do in any situation was part of the traditional meaning of the role. This social destiny was backed up by the authority of church or state.

This simple view of ethics was destroyed about 200 years ago, most notably by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Kant is in many ways the inventor of the 20th Century. He rejected the ethical force of tradition, and created the modern idea of autonomy. Along with this radical idea, he introduced the centrality of rational thought as both the glory and the obligation of human beings. There is a paradox in Kant: Each person makes free, autonomous choices, unfettered by outside authority, and yet each person is compelled by the demands of rationality to accept Kant's ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative. This principle is based on the idea that what is ethical for an individual must be generalizable to everyone.

Modern cognitive psychology is based on Kant's ideas. Central to the functioning of the mind, most people now believe, is information processing and rational argument. Even emotions, for many psychologists, are a kind of theorem based on reasoning from data. Kohlberg's theory of moral development interprets moral weakness as cognitive weakness, the inability to understand sophisticated moral reasoning, rather than as a failure of will. Disputed questions of ethics, like abortion, are debated as if they were questions of fact, subject to rational proof.

Since Kant, many philosophers have refined his work, and many others have disagreed with it. For our purpose, understanding what a hacker is, we must consider one of the latter, Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855). A Christian who hated the established churches, Kierkegaard accepted Kant's radical idea of personal autonomy. But he rejected Kant's conclusion that a rational person is necessarily compelled to follow ethical principles. In the book Either-Or he presents a dialogue between two people. One of them accepts Kant's ethical point of view. The other takes an aesthetic point of view: what's important in life is immediate experience.

The choice between the ethical and the aesthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is the choice whether or not to choose in terms of good and evil. At the heart of the aesthetic way of life, as Kierkegaard characterises it, is the attempt to lose the self in the immediacy of present experience. The paradigm of aesthetic expression is the romantic lover who is immersed in his own passion. By contrast the paradigm of the ethical is marriage, a state of commitment and obligation through time, in which the present is bound by the past and to the future. Each of the two ways of life is informed by different concepts, incompatible attitudes, rival premises. [MacIntyre, p. 39]

Kierkegaard's point is that no rational argument can convince us to follow the ethical path. That decision is a radically free choice. He is not, himself, neutral about it; he wants us to choose the ethical. But he wants us to understand that we do have a real choice to make. The basis of his own choice, of course, was Christian faith. That's why he sees a need for religious conviction even in the post-Kantian world. But the ethical choice can also be based on a secular humanist faith.

A lesson on the history of philosophy may seem out of place in a position paper by a computer scientist about a pragmatic problem. But Kierkegaard, who lived a century before the electronic computer, gave us the most profound understanding of what a hacker is. A hacker is an aesthete.

The life of a true hacker is episodic, rather than planned. Hackers create "hacks.'' A hack can be anything from a practical joke to a brilliant new computer program. (VisiCalc was a great hack. Its imitators are not hacks.) But whatever it is, a good hack must be aesthetically perfect. If it's a joke, it must be a complete one. If you decide to turn someone's dorm room upside-down, it's not enough to epoxy the furniture to the ceiling. You must also epoxy the pieces of paper to the desk.

Steven Levy, in the book Hackers, talks at length about what he calls the "hacker ethic.'' This phrase is very misleading. What he has discovered is the Hacker Aesthetic, the standards for art criticism of hacks. For example, when Richard Stallman says that information should be given out freely, his opinion is not based on a notion of property as theft, which (right or wrong) would be an ethical position. His argument is that keeping information secret is inefficient; it leads to unaesthetic duplication of effort.

The original hackers at MIT-AI were mostly undergraduates, in their late teens or early twenties. The aesthetic viewpoint is quite appropriate to people of that age. An epic tale of passionate love between 20-year-olds can be very moving. A tale of passionate love between 40-year-olds is more likely to be comic. To embrace the aesthetic life is not to embrace evil; hackers need not be enemies of society. They are young and immature, and should be protected for their own sake as well as ours.

In practical terms, the problem of providing moral education to hackers is the same as the problem of moral education in general. Real people are not wholly ethical or wholly aesthetic; they shift from one viewpoint to another. (They may not recognize the shifts. That's why Levy says "ethic'' when talking about an aesthetic.) Some tasks in moral education are to raise the self-awareness of the young, to encourage their developing ethical viewpoint, and to point out gently and lovingly the situations in which their aesthetic impulses work against their ethical standards.

Reference

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.

Note: This is an appendix to Computer Hacking and Ethics, a position paper written for the ACM Select Panel on Hacking in 1985.

Creating Good Passwords

Creating Good Passwords

Most people don't have good passwords because they don't understand how to create them. This how to provides some tips to help create secure passwords in a format that is ready to provide to your users as part of a training packet.

1. Avoid Dictionary Words
   First of all, avoid using dictionary words, this includes words from science fiction dictionaries, foreign dictionaries, and dictionaries of common names. Even obscure words from science fiction or fantasy worlds are in special dictionaries and are guessed.
   
   
2. Avoid Appending a Number to a Dictionary Word
   Most people think that appending a number to a dictionary word makes their password stronger. This is false, avoid simply adding numbers to common words.
   
   
3. Avoid Using Significant Dates and Names
   Avoid using significant dates such as anniversaries or birthdays in your password, these are easy to guess by people who know you. Also avoid using names of family members and pets, they are also easily guessable.
   
   
4. If You Can Memorize Random Passwords Do So
   If you are capable of memorizing a string of 6-10 random letters, numbers and symbols randomly generate your password and memorize it. This will give you the most secure password possible. Don't think you can do it, think about how many random sets of numbers you know such as your SSN, phone number, etc
   .
   
5. Use Mnemonics of Phrases
   Rather than using words, use a seemingly random phrase to create a mnemonic. For example IwtbotTo2C seems very random, the mnemonic is "It was the best of times Tale of Two Cities" the first line and title of one of my favorite books. Poems, song lyrics, etc. make great quotes to use as a mnemonic, the more obscure the better.
   
   
6. Substitute Numbers and Special Characters
   Substitute numbers and special characters for letters, preferably in short phrases rather than individual words, for example N0G00dD33d or DefyGr@v1ty.
   
   
7. Memorize your Password
   Whatever method you choose to create a good password, choose something that you can memorize without writing it down. If you absolutely must write down a password keep it is a secure location, never around your work-space.
   
   
8. Use Separate Passwords for Work and Personal
   Keep seperate passwords for your work and personal accounts. This way if one is compromised the other will not be.
   
   

Conclusion:

Create strong passwords and your network will be more secure avoiding problems instead of recovering from them. Users do not create poor passwords because they want their account broken into, they create them because they don't know how to do better.

10 Speed Up Windows Tips

Is your Windows slowing down lately? Follow these 10 Steps to SPEED IT UP!

Step 1. Disk Space Check

1. CHECK YOUR HARD DISK SPACE. As a rule, you want to keep at least 15% of the hard disk space free to keep the computer running smoothly. Simply go to My Computer, right-click on Hard Drive, and go to Properties. There you'll see a pie chart of your free versus used space. If it’s mostly full, you'll want to start by removing unnecessary programs and files; if it’s not, you probably want to tackle the actual way your computer operates.

Step 2. Uninstall Unnecessary Programs 

2. UNINSTALL THE SOFTWARES THAT YOU DO NOT USE. Go to Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs (or Uninstall a Program, depending on your operating system) to find a master list of programs installed on your computer. Some things will strike you as useless immediately, in which case you can remove them right away. Others won’t look familiar to you and may require you some research.

Checking Last Used On just to make sure...

It may help to see how often you use the program. If you right-click one of the column titles above your program list (ex. Name, Publisher, Size, Installed On, etc.), you should be able to add additional characteristics by which to judge your programs. For example, find Last Used On on the list of options and check it; a column displaying the last time you used each program will now appear and can also be used to sort your programs. Some programs will not have been used in years and may be candidates for deletion.

Step 3. Empty Recycle Bin

3. ALWAYS make it a habit to Empty your Recycle Bin.

Step 4. Using msconfig to limit start-up programs/applications

4. WINDOWS START-UP: Prevent unnecessary programs from starting when the computer boots. The more programs try to run while your computer initializes, the slower everything your computer will be. Revise your start-up programs by altering your system configuration via msconfig.

UNCHECK the programs that you don't need during start-up (e.g. Yahoo Messenger, Groove Monitor, uTorrent, BitTorrent, Skype etc..). You can run this programs only when you need it and not during start-up.

Step 5. Install an Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware

5. INSTALL AN ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAM, spyware scanner, and an anti-malware. The fewer bugs, viruses, and bits of adware your computer has to manage, the more time it will have to devote to other processes. While you're at it, make a point of keeping Windows up-to-date; not only will this keep Windows itself in better shape, but some viruses ride in on Windows updates that are downloaded way after the fact (and therefore not monitored as closely).

Step 6. Disk Cleanup

6. RUN DISK CLEANUP. This can clean up hundreds of megabytes of temporary files – sometimes even gigabytes (if you have Windows XP, Vista, or 7). It will also open a window in which you can chose what to delete. Go to My Computer, right-click the Hard Drive and select Properties, and then click Disk Cleanup (within the General tab). Check all the boxes except for the game files and setup files.

Step 7. Disk Defragment

7. DEFRAGMENT YOUR HARD DRIVES. This will reconfigure the way the hard drive stores information for maximum efficiency. Go to My Computer, right-click the Hard Drive and select Properties, then go to the Tools tab and click Defragment Now.

Step 8. Check Disk for Errors

8. CHECK YOUR DISK FOR ERRORS. Disk errors slows down your computer. Go to My Computer, right-click the Hard Drive and select Properties, then go to the Tools tab and click Check Now under the Error-Checking area. When the dialogue box opens, check both boxes.

If you get a window saying that Windows can't check the disk while it's in use, click on Schedule Disk Check and then OK. Disk check will run on your next reboot.

Step 9. Turn off Indexing

9. TURN OFF INDEXING. Go to My Computer, right-click the Hard Drive and select Properties, then uncheck the box indicating that the drive should be indexed. Don't do this if you actually use any of the Windows Search functionality. The background indexing is what makes those searches fast and Windows is already very good about not getting in your way to do indexing while you're trying to do something else.

Step 10-A. Create a batch file to Clear the Prefetch Folder

10. CLEAR THE PREFETCH FOLDER. Windows saves a file of the program you are using to make it start up faster. After years of use, this folder gets stuffed with irrelevant programs. 

10-a. Create a batch file to accomplish this task. Simply, open Notepad and type the following lines:

@echo off

cls

del C:\Windows\Prefetch\*.* /Q

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks 

(Copy and paste this text to ensure you don’t make any mistakes.)

Step 10-B. Saving the FASTER.BAT

10-b. Save as faster.bat (the .bat extension will run it as a batch file).

Step 10-C. Run the batch file.

10-c. Run faster.bat. Simply double-click the file to initialize. In a few moments, the command prompt will disappear and your programs should run more smoothly.

desktop.ini

Problem:

After you turn on your computer the desktop loads and...

Notepad Starts With "[.ShellClassInfo] LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\System32\Shell32.dll,-21787" When You Start Your Computer

Solution:
  
1. Open Windows Explorer, then click on Organize -> Folder and Search Options.
2. Go to View tab.
3. Under “Hidden files and folders” tree, select Show hidden files, folders and drives.
4. Uncheck Hide protected operating system files in order to be able to view the hidden desktop.ini file.
5.Click OK when done.
6. Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup folder, or alternatively, just type shell:common startup in Start Search and hit Enter.
7. Delete desktop.ini file inside the folder.
8. Navigate to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup folder, or alternatively, just type shell:startup in Start Search and hit Enter.
9. Delete desktop.ini file inside the folder.
10. The bug has been fixed, and no Notepad window with desktop.ini will appear on reboot or startup anymore.

Windows 7 Desktop Goes Crazy

Problem:
Computer works fine only that when you click the desktop icons like My Computer, Documents...
the windows are opened MINIMIZED. The opened windows won't MAXIMIZE.

Even running Windows Explorer and regedit still loads MINIMIZED 

Solution:


1. Create a batch file with the following lines:

@echo off
cls
:: To reset all folders to default folder views
Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU" /F
Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags" /F

Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\Bags" /F
Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU" /F

Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU" /F
Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags" /F

Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags" /F
Reg Delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Wow6432Node\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU" /F
:: To kill and restart explorer
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start explorer.exe

2. Save the file and name it like: 'resetmydesktop.bat'

3. Run the batch file.