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July 27, 2003 Ok so I exaggerated a little. If you did upgrade your OS, it cost a few bucks—unless you have a teenager in the house, in which case it was probably free. (JUST KIDDING, BILL GATES!) But you were planning to upgrade anyway or get a newer computer, weren’t you? Yeah, sure! But you have to admit the rest was all free. And now for some more really good free stuff. Now that you have your computer more secure with a firewall, have rooted out and removed the cookies and trojans and bots that might have infested it, how about you test it? First, just for fun, turn off your firewall program, and turn down the firewall in your browser. The later versions of Internet Explorer have one, you know. You didn’t? Well, click on “tools,” then “internet options,” and you’ll find security and privacy tabs. These adjust a rudimentary built-in firewall and and a cookie blocker which you can set to pre- programmed levels or customize. Don’t mess with customizing for now unless you know all about it, in which case, why are you bothering to read this? Just turn both sliders down to the lowest setting TEMPORARILY! Now go to http://grc.com/intro.htm Click on the “Shields Up” logo, and on the next screen, scroll down to “ShieldUp!” and click on that, and at the next screen scroll down and click on “Test My Shields!” for a test of your security. This site will attempt to log on to your computer using reasonably up-to-date hacker type tools and give you a readout of any vulnerabilities found. You can then click on the “Scan My Ports” for another type of vulnerability test. After having done that, and noting what vulnerabilities there are, restart your firewall program and go back to the IE internet options and move the security and privacy scanners back up to at least medium-high. Then run the vulnerability tests again and see if they are eliminated. If not, you may need more firewall tuning, but that’s for another day. Most likely, you will be judged secure unless you are running a server, which is also a problem for another day. For an internal security test, one which you download, go back to http://grc.com/intro.htm Click on “Shields Up.” Scroll down to “Hot Spots” and click on “Leak Test,” download and run it. This will test for programs trying to access the internet from inside your computer. As long as you are on the GRC site, download and run “UnPlugnPray” and “SocketLock” if you are running Windows XP. These are freeware (found under the “freeware” section, strangely enough) which fix two vulnerabilities in XP and allow you to switch these off and on easily if you actually require them. OK, that’s enough for now. As Arnold said in “Terminator,” “Ahh’lll be bock.” ------------ Email Brooks A. Mick: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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