Category: Silki Garg

A-Squared Emergency USB Stick – Portable Antivirus Kit

Paul

IT Security warfare is an interesting domain. It is a never ending race between the security software developers and malware writers. And since the security software always act after the development of the malware, they are always behind in this race.

But this fact poses a serious threat to the security of your system as a user. If you are not careful and regularly updating your antivirus applications, you might be late, and if the malware might get a chance to get the entry to your system, it can play havoc there.

Today’s Intelligent Malware…

Today’s malware are much more intelligent than their predecessors. They not only do the damage intended by their developers, but also make it difficult for security software to identify them. They try to disable your antivirus applications, they modify your system files so that you are not able to access the security software websites and forums, they hijack your browser homepages, they disable the update procedure of your security software and use all such tricks, which make their detection difficult.

What is the Solution?

In a such a situation, you need a security tool, which remains aloof from your system and can be used as and when required. A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is one such portable tool, which can be used in such a situation.
A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is a combination of two free security tools from the reputed security vendor EMSI. These tools are…

A-squared Free:

[ad]With a-squared Free you have got the powerful a-squared Scanner including graphical user interface. Search the infected PC for Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Dialers, Keyloggers and other malign programs.

a-squared Command line Scanner:

This scanner contains the same functionality as a-squared Free but without a graphical user interface. The command line tool is made for professional users and can be used perfectly for batch jobs

You can download this and save it in your USB Flash Drive. In some unfortunate instance, when the security software installed in your system is not able to detect any malware, and the malware damages your system files, then there are chances that this USB stick remains protected, because it may not have been inserted in your computer at the time when the malware has been doing its job.

Once you are aware about the presence of the malware, you can try to use this portable antivirus kit to clean your system. The command line tool coming with this portable antivirus toolkit is especially useful because many of the present day malware can potentially disable the GUI interface of the popular security software.

[Download A-Squared Emergency USB Stick]

[This is a Guest Post from Silki Garg, who enjoys writing about Internet and PC Security Issues. Check out her latest articles on ClamWin Portable Virus Remover and Windows Security Options Tool WinPatrol.]

Free Anonymous Browsing with Opera-Tor

Paul

2588641284_603490d6d1_m Photo by Philip Chapman-Bell

Anonymous browsing is something of huge interest to the Internet users, who are very particular about their online privacy and security. There may be many reasons and situations, when you might be interested in using internet anonymously; for instance, you may be working on a public place and do not want to leave the traces or you may not like your family members or office colleagues to know what you have been doing online. Whatever be the reason, but still, it is an area, where a lot research is to be done.

 

How Anonymous Browsers Operate?

At present there are two dominant techniques used by various anonymous browsing tools. One is the use of JAP Networks, which was used hugely used earlier but later it ran into controversies after a backdoor had to be put into the product to allow interception of child pornographers on insistence of German Police.

 

The second technique is the use of Tor (The Onion Ring), which only allows anonymous browsing but also facilitates other applications like anonymous P2P, email, IM, and IRC chat. This technique is dominantly used in present day anonymous browsing tools.

 

Operator – A useful anonymous browser

 

OperaTor is small and relatively fast anonymous web browser, which combines the browsing platform of Opera, with privacy provided by Tor engines and the speed of browsing provided by Polipo.

 

You can download this 7MB application in your USB drive and carry it whenever you need to use a public computer for anonymous surfing.

 

In my testing, I was pleasantly surprised with the speed of browsing, which I was getting with this little tool. I had earlier used XBBrowser for anonymous browsing, but it was too slow, as compared to Operator. In fact, there was hardly any noticeable difference in the browsing speed as compared to my normal Opera browser. This is because of Polipo, the small caching web proxy, that comes bundled with Opera-Tor.

 

Since Operator allows only http and https protocols in anonymous mode, you should avoid Javascripts and Opera’s IRC functions running through it.

 

Some people complain that it has not yet released the source code of itself. But my view is that unless you are hard-core programmer and really need to tweak the source code, why should you worry about that. After all, trusted networks like CNet says OperaTor has been tested spyware free and Softpedia gave OperaTor its 100% Clean award. Major antivirus vendors, like GData, Kaspersky, McAfee and Microsoft, confirm that OperaTor contains no malicious software.

 

Overall, one of the best applications for anonymous browsing available today.

[This is a guest post by Silki Garg. She advises on how to eliminate spyware, online threats and malware detection, on her Internet Security Blog. A visit to her Blog is highly recommended. You’re sure to find something of interest.]