Category: web

Secure Browser Alternatives for browsing safely on the web!

Paul

Zero day vulnerabilites target Internet Explorer

Cyber Security Awareness Month

If you didn’t know October is Cyber Security Awareness Month and I wanted to give out some ways to keep you safe on the internet.   I know I am not the only to suggest some of this but if you didn’t know please don’t use Internet Explorer to web browse.   If should only be used for updating Windows and that is the extent of what it should be used for it.

Is Chrome more secure than Safari?

Safari, to my knowledge as a few vulnerabilities and thus you should be keep away from using it.   I won’t say much about this because we never really know who is actually going to use these but you can bet hackers know of ways to get into your system.

Which Browser is best?

Any browser you think is safe is probably going to be wrong.   I am going to tell you which browsers are safer but none of them are a 100 percent safe.   Each one of them has good and bad but I am going to at least guide you in the right direction.  

Chrome Browser

Chrome is one of the ones, I do recommend but it shouldn’t just be used by itself.   You should add a few extensions to better protect yourself:

  • Adblock Plus — Good to protect yourself from those annoying advertising.   (Please be aware that I use advertising on my site and that is how I pay for my hosting and other things like that.   Please consider white listing my website to allow advertising.)
  • Lastpass — This is one of those that I recommend on a constant basis because it makes sure you create a strong password that you don’t have to remember.   It helps make sure no account password is ever the same!
  • ScriptSafe — Keep unwanted scripts from playing when you visit a website!  Certain web sites should be allowed and white listed, like mine. 
  • Dolphin Connect — I use the Dolphin browser on my Android Device and this is one of those ways to keep track of all your bookmarks.   Not really security related but it is very useful!

These are just a few that I recommend when you use the Chrome Browser.

FireFox Browser

FireFox is another one that I recommend when you are looking to browse the web securely.  Although it isn’t 100% secure because none are.   Some of the Add On’s you should add to your FireFox Browser are:

  • NoScript Security Suite — It is another No Script app that lets you prevent unwanted scripts from running! 
  • Lastpass — Just like Chrome, it helps keep your passwords safe and helps you keep all passwords unique!
  • Adblock Plus — Just like Chrome this can help keep those annoying advertisements from showing but please remember to white list sites that do need to advertise and do not use annoying advertisements!
  • Web Of Trust — This is a good add on for Firefox to know which web sites you can trust more with and which ones that are not trustworthy!  (if you like my site could you review it and let people know what you think about this site!)

As you can see these are the two that I always tell my family to install, I usually don’t tell them to install both but one of these two but it is up to you if you want to have both web browsers installed on your system.   It just varies from person to person which one is better for your use!   I am sure there are more addon’s or extensions that you should add but these are the ones I tell my friends and family to install first.  Which one of these two browsers are you favorite?  Leave a comment and tell others!

 

People coming from Sites that don’t exist

Paul

So I woke up today checking out my sites, and looking outside.   So As I was checking my Stats for my blog.  I cam across a referring site that brought Supposedly Two people to my site.  I looked at the URL for the site:

  • http://trojan.fiftystatesclassifiedads.com/index.php

[ad#ad2-right]So after seeing the “trojan” Prefix and I am wondering if this was an attempt by Malware to infect my domain.   So I go check this domain out.   I got to it and I get a 404.  I then do a Cache Check with OPENDNS.  I also Then decided to see if it was even Registered domain by the doing a Whois.  So I am opening this up to people who might know.   I did do some research and here’s wha I’ve found out so far.

According to How2hack, they talk about how people want privacy and that it might be someone who does not want to be found.  I tend to agree with them, Privacy for Privacy sake is good but if you want to be private you would you even be checking out websites knowing people will want to find out who really is coming to your site.  The How2Hack site also talks about how this might happen and I see where they are coming from.

This was the only site I could find that even looked like it was relevant to what I was searching for.  I don’t see how someone can come to my site saying they were referred by another site and that site does not exist?  Anyone want to try to answer this question and give insight as to why this would happen?

Facebook: Virus Variant comes back from the dead!

Paul

In my recent post, I talked about a Virus that is circulating around on Facebook.  It is know as the Koobface virus and has been changed a little by the programers.   So I what is Techworld saying, just this:

[ad#ad2-right]

In fact, Koobface is now using one of Facebook’s own features against it, Lovet said. The latest variant uses Facebook’s ability to redirect web links to drive users to malicious websites, often hosted on Geocities.com, Lovet said.

[Via Techworld]

If you have been victim to this little virus, you should check out my Virus removal page and download the programs that should fix this little virus for good on your system.  You should also check out my Previous post I also have some good tips and tricks to prevent the user(YOU) from getting hit by this virus in the first place. This virus is a Good social engineered virus, so please be careful.

Facebook : Beware Spam for breakfast. (Virus)

Paul

In today’s society, we’ve been to complacent with people with people clicking links for the social group. In one such article on Channel Web, a nice little blog, says this:

[ad#ad2-right]

The worm was discovered by IT security provider Kaspersky Lab, which said the threat, Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, is targeting Facebook users by creating spam messages and sending them to the infected user’s friends via the site.

“Unfortunately, users are very trusting of messages left by ‘friends’ on social networking sites,” said Alexander Gostev, senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab, in a statement. “So, the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high.”


[Via Channel Web]

This seems to be a problem people thinking that a link someone sends them is a real good link but actually is a link to a video site. According to this article the links people are sending are actually a fake video link, telling you have to download some update to flash player, by downloading this program. The user gets involved with the virus and the fun begins. So how can you prevent this from happening, two ways one is a very good group of software to make sure you have the latest and greatest video codecs. That too can be something they’ll say you need and if you’ve already installed this list of codecs then you know they’ll not telling the truth and you can quickly get away from the site laughing.

[ad#ad2-left]What’s this program name, it is call the K-lite Mega Codec pack. In this Pack you will be able to play almost everything without having to go download another program. This is done by people who want you to have all the latest codecs installed so you don’t have to go by a program you’ll only going to use once a month.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll no longer have to worry for the most part about codecs. There will be times when you might have to visit that site and update them but that will be far less.

The other thing you must remember is if it says you must update your player. That should be a sign that there is something. I’ll always go to the site and check for example Adobe. If it says I need to update my flash I’ll manually type it into my browser. This way you will know you have the latest updates, if you need to update the flash player by all means go to here and update.

If you got the virus I’d check out my Anti-virus and Anti-Spyware page and that should show you will you need to get rid of the Virus. This virus is very easy to get rid of, just download any one of the anti-virus software and install it. Don’t forget to update the virus database while your at it. That should fix the problem pretty fast. Remember the only way to prevent from getting the virus is YOU.

Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.A is not a Firefox plugin.

Paul

A new type of malware designed to harvest web passwords has been detected in-the-wild by BitDefender’s antivirus research labs. This latest e-threat – called Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.A – is intended to be delivered onto a compromised computer system by other malware for subsequent download into Mozilla Firefox’s Plugin folder. Once installed it gets to work every time Firefox is started.

[Via Bitdefender]

[ad#ad2-right]So having seen this I thought I’d come up with ways around this to better protect yourself.  One way to prevent this from getting your sensitive data is to get a program like Sandboxie.   You could stop using Firefox that would be silly, because right now Firefox is more secure than Chrome and Internet Explorer.   I’d also suggest checking out my Anti-spyware page and Anti-Virus page and get some more protection.

The key to this virus protection is just be cautious of where you go and keep all you system update to date to prevent all this from happening.  It is also advisable to not have your passwords saved on Firefox, you should use something like Roboform, it is free  to download and try.  It will encrypt your passwords so if they don’t know the master password then they are out of luck.  Roboform is also good for coming up with some strong passwords.  Just some suggestions to prevent from people seeing your sensitive data, you don’t want anyone to get that data.