The Conficker worm, in an attempt to take the internet community by surprise, has recently activated on an unexpected date and has “phoned home” from infected computers to get some malicious payload of scare ware installed on those computers.

The scare ware is fake anti-virus software that “finds” infections on the infected machine and asks the user to pay $49.95 to get rid of them. I don’t know if the user’s machine is actually infected with the malware that the bogus anti-virus finds before it is detected, or whether the malware program simply lies. – ‘Probably a bit of both. – And you can bet that any installed trojans and spyware that the Conficker distributors find it useful for your computer to stay infected with aren’t detected.

Conficker exploits Windows vulnerabilities that have been patched for a while now. – So if you have Conficker on your machine and it’s working as intended, then you haven’t got the necessary patches from Microsoft.

First we need to be more definite about whether or not your machine is infected. Go here to find out. – It’s fairly self-explanatory. If it appears that your machine is infected, download and run the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool. – That will kill the infection, plus several others if you have them. Now repair/re-download/update your anti-virus software as necessary, and run a manual scan.

In future ensure that the latest patches from Microsoft are applied to your system as and when they are issued. This will avoid your computer becoming infected, and even if it should still become infected, the virus won’t be able to function and will be exterminated by the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Mary Landesman wrote an article on About.com, which brought up some interesting points. Three different free antivirus solutions were tested: AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic, AVAST 4 Home Edition, and AVG Free Edition. Of these; AVAST! (Which I use.) fared the best, detecting 92% of zoo viruses. AntiVir came second with an 85% detection rate, and AVG was in last place with only 81% detection rate.

When it came to being fast at releasing updates against major threats though, AntiVir was tops, with Avast! in second place, and AVG once again lagging behind in last place.

Although all three solutions claim to give protection against spyware and adware, they’re all fairly lousy at doing so. Avast! was again the best; despite scoring only 33%. AVG was yet again in last place.

As with everything else, you get what you pay for; so if you need an active all-round security suite I personally recommend the paid-for Kaspersky Internet Security Complete Protection , which has in test after test proved to be one of the best security solutions on the market. Linux users and geeky types may prefer NOD32/Eset Smart Security, which is also one of the best out there – Although I personally found it to be a bit bloated when I tested it last year (2008) in November.

I remember back in the days in the 20th Century when I was running Windows 98SE I had Trend PC-Cillin installed, (Not free) which failed to detect a particularly virulent virus which subsequently infected my system and disabled all protection. I installed a different paid-for solution, (I forget the name of it.) which the virus couldn’t disable and which detected and killed the virus. That goes to show that no antivirus solution; free or paid-for, is infallible.

I’ve always scanned with Lavasoft AdAware on a weekly basis anyway. – So if anything is missed by Avast! then AdAware; probably the best anti-malware solution I’ve seen, even topping Malware Bytes, will remove it.

What antivirus or security suite are you using? How would you rate it? Please comment.

Added 16th December 2009: Since I wrote this article a new free antivirus solution from Microsoft; namely Microsoft Security Essentials, has been released. In the opinion of myself and other testers; all other free antivirus solutions suck in comparison, and I strongly recommend that, if you’re not prepared to pay for an antivirus/malware solution, you download and install Microsoft Security Essentials

If you buy your computers pre-built with the operating system and other software pre-installed, you’ll notice that over time the unit’s operation becomes slower and slower. Eventually things might start to go wrong: Existing programs may crash unexpectedly, new programs that you install may not work properly and/or may affect other programs and/or the operating system itself. Even the operating system itself may seem to start behaving strangely. Why does this happen? In this article I’m going to be looking at the issues from the perspective of a Windows XP Professional user; such as myself.

In a lot of cases the issues arise due to a lack of maintenance. Imagine if you bought a new car but never checked, maintained, or serviced it at all: Eventually it would start to go wrong and eventually break down. A computer is like a car in that it requires constant maintenance. Just like a car won’t work well or long if all you do is fill it up with petrol for a long time, ignoring maintenance; so a computer won’t work well or long if all you do is plug it in and use it for a long time, ignoring maintenance.

In such cases the first thing people normally do is blame their hardware or somebody else. The somebody else is usually a tech; primarily the tech that built it. I once had someone insist that the reason why their machine wasn’t working very fast after they’d been downloading virus-laden files using p2p software and installing pirated software was because I hadn’t built it properly and that it was definitely a hardware fault. – This despite the fact that this person’s computer-literacy was virtually nil, and they had no idea of what went on inside their machine.

Even if the user practices safe-computing to the letter; there’s still a need to maintain the software. If your anti-malware software requires manually updating then do it regularly and routinely; or upgrade the entire program to one that automatically updates. There are free anti-malware programs that update regularly from the internet and will cost you nothing, nada, zilch. The one I recommend is called Avast! .

Even though your anti-malware program may regularly update itself from the web; there are still chances that a new virus might get in before the update occurs. There are also chances that a particular type of malware that’s got into your computer may not be recognised by the program. Always run a full virus-scan at least weekly; using both your installed software as well as an online virus scanner.

There’s also the chance that data residing on your hard-drive, including your hard-drive’s file system itself, can become corrupted. (Especially with Windows.) The more time this is allowed to continue the worse it’ll get; until it eventually becomes noticeable and the user starts suspecting a hardware malfunction after a system crash or some other symptom. I suggest that every month you run the chkdsk program. Although this can be run from the graphical user interface inside Windows; it’s easier to run it from a command line in my opinion: -

Click Start>Run and type chkdsk /r. This instructs the computer to run the chkdsk program which checks the hard-drive for errors. In this case, since you’ve used the /r parameter; it’ll check for any errors that it finds in the file-system and the data, and it’ll do it’s best to repair any errors that it finds. – It’s not infallible but it usually works. If you’re running chkdsk on your primary drive you’ll be asked to reboot so that chkdsk can work while the drive’s not in use.

If you have more than one hard-drive, or a partitioned hard-drive, you may find that you have to specify a drive letter in the command. For example: chkdsk E: /r  This command instructs the computer to run the chkdsk program on drive E: and repair any errors that it finds.

There’s also data fragmentation, which builds up over time. (This only happens with Windows and some Linux distros. It doesn’t happen on a Mac.) What’s going on here?

When Windows writes to disk it writes to the next available space on the disk. If that space is less than the data that it needs to write then it moves on past the data already on the disk to the next available space, where it starts writing again. If it still hasn’t finished writing the file but runs out of space again, then it once again uses the next available space…and so on until the write is completed. As a consequence you end up with several fragments of the file strewn across the disk. Although the system knows where these fragments are, and that they’re bits of a single file; because the information that tells it so is stored in the registry, the read-heads of the hard-drive have to spend longer seeking out and reading all those fragments when Windows wants to access the file again at a later time. If that’s just the one file then it doesn’t make much difference to performance. If it’s lots of files that are fragmented then the hard-drive can take twice as long or more reading them all, and hence performance is slowed down significantly. If it’s a large lot of or all the files that are fragmented them the computer becomes disorientated, sees data errors where there are none due to slow read-times, and crashes. Also the amount of strain on the hard-disk’s mechanisms can vastly increase reading fragmented files; therefore the lifetime of the drive decreases with use.

You can buy programs that automate the defragmentation process. I personally recommend Diskeeper for this purpose. Although it’s paid-software, you can currently use the software free for 30 days trial if you’d prefer to try it out first.

If you’re not using automated defragmentation-software, however, you should manually defragment your hard-drive at least weekly. Failure to do so will result in impaired system performance and eventually a BSOD if you leave it long enough.

Finally the obvious: If you run pirated software you’re breaking the law and are liable for prosecution if found out. Also pirated software might contain corrupted data and/or viruses/spyware/keyloggers. It might also use techniques to bypass the program’s anti-piracy measures that are detrimental to your computer hardware. If you insist on running pirated software than be prepared for anything to go wrong.

If you use p2p software; even if you don’t make illegal downloads, be very careful what you download: There are viruses out there that can get into your system and disable all of its protection; leaving it vulnerable to any and all kinds of attack.

Your computer is a machine: Like any machine; including your body, if you don’t maintain it then it WILL fall into disrepair and eventually break down.

Please comment.

*I am not currently at time of writing affiliated to Avast! or Diskeeper: Therefore whether or not you use these products; I will not gain or lose anything.

During 2007, Computer Shopper magazine tested a number of free and paid-for antivirus solutions. NOD 32 came second to Kaspersky. By the time I tried Kaspersky for myself they’d released a new version which was so bloated I thought of Norton. I’d tried NOD 32 previous to this on a single-cored Pentium 4-driven system, however, and was quite impressed by its functionality, ease of use, and small footprint.

During this month; November 2008, I got the chance to try out the full version of Smart Security from ESET, the makers of NOD 32. As a rule I always try out anything new on my second machine, which happens to be currently fitted with a 2.2GHz single-cored Athlon 64 processor.

I installed the product: Installation was quick and painless and I soon had it up and running properly after it had updated itself with all the latest files.

The firewall isn’t intrusive. It keeps track of what’s going in and out; but unlike some it doesn’t continually ask you whether you’d prefer to allow or deny every single connection. It accepts everything acceptable that’s flowing from trusted software which is already installed and does its job silently.

The antivirus scan is well hot: It even informs you if files are corrupted, incomplete, or don’t have a valid checksum, in addition to telling you if any files are infected with spyware or a virus.

The anti-spam I didn’t really try out so I won’t present any data on that.

My overall verdict is that it’s a very good security suite; but the problem is that it has a large footprint: If it almost occupies an entire core; even on a single-cored 64-bit processor, then it’s too big for my liking. On a quad or six-core processor-driven machine things might not be so bad; but certainly I’d say it used far too much CPU for a single or dual-cored machine.

A strange twist to this article occurred whilst I was writing it: I heard a loud click from my second machine, which was right next to me, and a metallic noise. Then nothing appeared to happen out of the ordinary for about a minute, when suddenly that machine stopped, switched off without shutting down.

I hoped that the fault wasn’t as I expected; but on opening the machine my worst fears were confirmed:

The Shuttle motherboard used in its construction, like most other socket AM2 motherboards, keeps the cooler attached to the socket AM2 CPU by means of a fixing where a metal loop attached to a lever is hooked over one of two lugs on the enclosure around processor socket. This lever appears on the other side of the cooler with a similar metal loop attached to it. This other loop is hooked over the other lug and tension is applied to it by means of another lever; therefore the processor and cooler stay in close contact while the cooler is tensioned downwards onto the face of the processor so that heat transfer is maximised with the help of some heat-conductive grease.

The model of Shuttle motherboard used (Now discontinued.) uses a rather brittle material to make the CPU surroundings including these lugs that the cooler depends on to stay in contact with the processor: Not a noticeably brittle material, but nevertheless to brittle for the purpose. I’ve had one or two of these machines returned under warranty with the lugs snapping off after a number of months, rendering the entire motherboard worthless and inoperative. That’s exactly what had happened to my machine (Kustom Komputa Exel model A101-s) which was one of the original machines built by Kustom Komputa in the days when a single-core Athlon was incorporated in them rather than a dual-core. This syndrome I’ve affectionately christened "lug-rot".

So what to do? Suddenly I was reduced to a single machine. Of course I can get by quite easily with only one computer; but it’s always better to have two: I use both at once occasionally, and I always have a spare if one breaks down, as had happened recently when the hard disk died on the other one.

I was planning to publish the article about ESET SS that day; but needs must, I had no backup, and if the other machine went down, as Sod’s law would make sure that it did if I had no backup, then I’d be totally stuffed.

I checked the junk cupboard: I had an old wrecked machine from about 4 years ago which the PSU had burnt out on. It had been checked since and the motherboard was still working. It was an Asrock board, still in a case, and the processor and cooler were still attached. I’d removed and dumped the burnt-out PSU, also I’d used the DDR RAM sticks and the hard drive from it. – Otherwise it was complete except for DDR RAM, PSU, and SATA leads: There was even a SATA DVD-RAM drive fitted but unconnected.

The processor was a 1.8GB AMD Sempron, which was a bit weak for my liking, as well as being only 32-bit, despite the motherboard being 64-bit capable. Seeing I didn’t have any socket 754 single-cored Athlon 64s in stock, which was the only other processor the board would take, the existing 32-bit Sempron would have to do. I had a brand new 300 Watt PSU and a 250 MB stick of DDR2 in stock. That would at least work; although rather weakly. I could use the hard drive from the failed computer…In fact I might be able to simply pop it in and boot up just as before without any problems.

I’m trying to keep this from taking on the proportions of a novel; in other words keep it short: So to cut a long story short I built it as planned and powered up: Rattle rattle rattle. – The hard-drive was having a fit. When it eventually booted it was unbelievably slow and the hard-drive was still thrashing. I had a driver CD for the board, which I managed to install eventually, but the performance didn’t improve to a level which I was anywhere near happy with.

I ended up taking note of everything that I had installed on the system partition C: on that disk and reformatting the partition, reinstalling, optimising, finalising… And now I have a second machine again that works well. I found another 250MB stick of DDR which I installed, and that made the performance so much better. Surprisingly, after reinstalling the Windows XP Home OS and activating it with just the 250MB RAM installed, it told me that I needed to activate it again after installing another 250MB stick!: A notice appeared at boot saying that the hardware specs had changed significantly and that I must reactivate this copy of Windows. – That’s the first time I’ve ever had to reactivate after installing just another single stick of RAM!

So usual scenario: A few hours building it (2 in fact.) and a whole day plus some installing, verifying, optimising the software. It was fun, but it delayed my posting to my blog.

Have you ever built a computer? What was your experience?

Have you ever tried ESET Smart Security? Do you agree with my findings?

Leave a comment below why not? Come on, don’t be shy, don’t leave it to the spammers to make the only comments. – Which I delete if the Akismet anti-spam software doesn’t get there first. Your comment probably won’t be deleted, even if it’s a negative comment. I have a good comment system set up: Use it why not?

In short – Everyone needs them – That includes YOU!

I have seen people using an old computer running Windows ME without any firewall, antivirus, antispyware; totally unpatched. I was so shocked that I commented out loud about having found the local computer virus maternity unit: The owner, who was in the nextdoor room, came scurrying in with a look of puzzlement combined with anger on her face.

This person had been merrily using a totally unprotected computer for years and spreading viruses to all and sundry across the internet for years; totally unaware of any threat to herself or others.

"Oh but I only use it online about an hour a day." She exclaimed.

– How thoughtful of you. NOT!

Some computer users I’ve encountered have no idea what a firewall is. Others have said that they think they don’t need antivirus software because they only have a dialup connection. Still others have antivirus software but didn’t realise that it had to be updated. And yet others even have complained to me that the security bug fix that "Microsoft" emailed to them didn’t do anything but slow their machine down.

The worst instance was a person who had had their machine "upgraded"- Allegedly from a single-core to a dual-core processor, and had supposedly moved from a 32-bit to a 64-bit installation of Windows XP, which they’d paid a sizable amount of money for the privilege of having carried out. On my examination the operating system disk packaging didn’t shed any light on the question of exactly what this person was running, as there was only a clear case with a home-recorded CD inside it. The contents of this CD included a virus that had been rewritten to defeat the Microsoft Genuine Advantage software and reported a legitimate key. It soon became clear that this was an unprotected, non-updated, unpatched pirated copy of Windows Vista, which was being run on a machine that was hardly capable of running it:

The "upgraded" "dual-core" processor was a 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 single-core processor and the RAM it was using was still the old DDR rather than DDR2. The motherboard was a rather ancient Asus board made to run the early 1st generation Athlon 64s, which was what it was still doing. The system was riddled with viruses and malware: In fact I was surprised that it was still running. The operating system was totally unprotected and all the software that they were running was pirated also.

Both the cases I’ve written about lived within 15 miles of me, and are just two worst-case examples of the many similar cases I’ve seen that close in proximity to where I live: The possibilities from those statistics frighten me no end. I would estimate that there are nearly a million internet-connected users in England alone who are not using any online protection and whose computers are virus and botnet nurseries.

On the basis of that estimate alone it should be fairly obvious to you why a computer needs protection.

In general I think that most computer users are too lax don’t take security seriously enough.

I am fairly certain that the number of machines that are still unprotected by any kind of firewall is fairly big.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines unprotected by any kind of anti-virus and anti-spyware software is quite high: Higher than you’d imagine.

I am fairly certain that the number of people who have anti-virus and anti-virus software installed, but whose databases have never been updated is quite colossal.

I am fairly certain that the percentage of machines that have not once taken any update to Windows or Windows components is probably in the twenties.

I am also fairly certain that there are a number of people who’ll click on links or open attachments from unknown sources without giving it a second thought.

Owning a computer could be likened to owning a car: Both require maintenance, both need attention, both need care when using them. When you drive a car you don’t just get in and drive off taking any route that you fancy. There are do’s and don’ts; there are things you can do and things you shouldn’t do:

For instance if you don’t stick to the roads and drive cross-country you’re likely to end up stuck in a rut or broken down in the middle of nowhere. If you try to drive through tree trunks you’ll end up with a busted car. (I know this: I didn’t try to drive through a tree, but I lost it on a corner and hit one once. In that instance I discovered that evolution fashioned trees in a stronger design than Ford fashioned cars.) If you drive recklessly you’ll end up hurting yourself financially and/or physically. Maybe you’ll end up hurting others too.

The same is true when using a computer: if you don’t bother to maintain it and just "drive" it in any old fashion you’ll get reputation and you’ll end up with a computer that’s slow, faulty, and full of malware. That malware will spread from your computer to other users because that is what it is made to do. If a person doesn’t use anti-virus then their computer will become a virus nursery and infect other computers: That is carelessness and selfishness on their part. likewise with anti-spyware, firewall, etc.

People do exactly that though: they don’t bother, they don’t care. They might not mind having a machine full of malware; but other people don’t want that. As a result, we have botnets, spam, and constant virus and spyware attacks.

My advice to every computer user – Whether they run Windows, Linux, or Mac; but especially if they run Windows, is:

Windows is a targeted operating system; but other operating systems are by no means immune to attack.

Everyone needs education: That includes computer users. What do YOU think?

In the post I made earlier entitled “A Geek’s Toolkit Supplement: Loaded USB Drive ” I spoke of what I described as “branding files”: Files that I add to the operating system to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer.

I can hear your brains whirring; so before you start thinking that I’m up to something naughty I’ll show you exactly what I mean. Oh yes; this only works if you have Windows XP installed, so don’t go trying it with a Linux or a OSX installation and then comment that I’ve messed up your operating system or “I can’t find those files in Ubuntu!” – “It doesn’t work with Leopard!” You’re quite right; it doesn’t – So be forewarned.

If this information has already been added to your operating system by the manufacturer then I suggest it best to just leave it anyway.

(Why are you playing about with your computer like this anyway? What do you hope to achieve? Oh well; your problem, not mine.)

The aim of the exercise is to customise Windows XP’s general tab in the System Properties dialogue box that you call up by right-clicking the My Computer icon and selecting Properties.

This customisation involves adding support contract information and a logo. It involves using only Notepad and whatever program you like to use to create a 256-colour bitmap.

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OK let’s start with the details: I won’t tell you exactly what details I put for computers that I build; so for this exercise we’ll assume that these details are regarding a computer built by the Acme Computer Corporation:

The computer is a Datamax, model 55102. Support line is 1-800-ACME…

Open Notepad and type the following text, replacing the example with your company’s details etc:

[General]

Manufacturer=Acme Computer Corporation

Model=Datamax 55102

[Support Information]

Line 1=Call 1-800-ACME for technical support

Line 2=  ">.invalid

Line 3=500 Billion Byte Drive

Line 4=Pixelgraphicsville, USA

Save this file to %windir%\Windows\System32 as Oeminfo.ini

Create a 256-colour bitmap of your company’s logo that is no more than 96X96 pixels in size. Save this file to %windir%\Windows\system32 as Oemlogo.bmp

Yes I deliberately soiled the picture: ‘Better safe than sorry.

To see the results either right-click on the My Computer icon or press the Windows and the Break key simultaneously.

And that’s how it’s done – No registry edits, no hacking into anything. This is a white box system builder’s trick; but it’s no massive secret. The files aren’t permanent anyway; if you remove them or reinstall your operating system the dialogue box reverts to default.

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Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself.

To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it.

A Topless and Bottomless Photo of Me

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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues.

I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised.

The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties.

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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows:

1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program.

2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that.

3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy.

4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all.

Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”.

There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).

So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong.

HTH (‘Hope That Helps.)

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