Talking about files, take a look at newzbin and binsearch to get a understanding what people post on the Usenet and decided for yourself if you want to give it a try. One of the best features of giganews is that they encrypt the traffic which means that your provider, and everyone else tapping the line, has no chance of finding out what you upload and download from their servers.

I always get max download speed when downloading from their fast servers, my cap is at 1.8 megabytes per second. Last but not least you should consider the following, more than 2 terabytes – that is 2000 gigabytes – of data are uploaded every day to the Usenet. This is huge if you consider the retention of 100 days which would mean that giganews currently hosts about 200 terabyte of data on their servers..

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Undelete Plus is a file recovery freeware that scans your hard drive for deleted files and recovers them for you. It supports the most common file systems such as fat16, fat32 and ntfs and is able to work with removable devices such as flash memory or disk drives as well. A great feature for a freeware file recovery software is the ability to work on network drives as well.

A little bit of background information why Undelete Plus is able to recover deleted files. Many users do not know that files that are deleted are not removed from the system at once. The complete file still exists on the drive but the reference to the file is deleted. File operations on those sectors make it harder to recover those files but the right tools (professional data recovery) can still detect those files.

This is one of the reasons why I would never sell my hard drives at ebay or other websites. The right equipment is able to check on my data and this is something that I do not want to risk. Even if you wipe it carefully there is the possiblity to recover files. Not with tools like Undelete Plus though.

The scan does not take this long until it is complete, on my 300 Gb hard drive it took about 20 minutes. After the scan finishes all files that can be recovered are displayed in the main window. The left window supplies some filters, you can choose that only a certain filetype is displayed for recovery, a certain folder location or a drive. (you may scan more than one drive).

Just mark the files that you want to recover and choose to keep the original folder structure of the files or move them all into a different folder. Undelete Plus found more than 60000 files that could be recovered on my drive which is a big number, I really have to think of a way to wipe them completely after a set number of days.

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The first and one of the most important steps would be to download and install the latest security fixes and services packs. I sometimes have to talk to users in my job (which is somewhat security related as well) and discover that they run Windows XP with the same settings that the pc was shipped with. No updates, outdated anti-virus definitions and the like. You do get the latest patches and fixes for your operating system at windowsupdates.

Make sure you have a valid license otherwise you will not be able to download the updates. A different way would be to use autopatcher which can be downloaded in a version that includes all the updates and fixes already.

The next step would be to turn off unnecessary services and programs that you won’t use. Why should the remote service be active if you never use it ? This reduces the chance of an attacker to get into the system. There are currently 19 services running on my system, if you never tinkered with them before you have probably double that size or even more.

Read the article about turning unnecessary services off, it explains the basics. It is a good idea to turn of the following services if you do not need them

• Telnet
• Universal Plug and Play Device Host
• IIS (not installed by default)
• Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
• Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
• Remote Registry
• Routing & Remote Access
• SSDP Discovery Service

Talking about software. It is wise to not use the default Microsoft products like Outlook Express or Internet Explorer. Those are attacked the most because most of the users use them. (besides offering great ways of attacking them) Alternatives would be Firefox or Opera for Internet Explorer and Thunderbird for Outlook Express.

You should install a anti-virus solution. I do use Antivir but others should be fine as well. The most important aspect is that you keep the definition files up to date. If the software offers automatic updates I suggest you make it update the files once a day.

Firewalls. I do not use them. Well, not a software based firewall that is. I do have a hardware firewall which is all I need. I think that firewalls give the user a false sense of security. They are highly complex and require lots of attention to secure the system. It is not enough to simply install one and click on accept / deny every time a program wants to connect to the internet.

To secure the system you have to add all the tools that should have internet access to the firewall rules with exactly the ports they need. You should close every other port that is not needed by those applications. A good freeware that displays the list of currently open ports is currports.

I think those are the most important steps. If you have more let me know them.

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Super Shredder from analog x deletes files securely so that they can´t be recovered by file recovery software. There are still ways to recover those files but the equipment needed is way to expensive for almost everyone. The tool supports common methods like Gutmann or Nispom (Departement of Defense) but also a way to completely customize the procedure.

Eraser is another tool which could be used.

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The article examines the WPA protection in detail and demonstrates how it can be cracked. The first part gives a good overview of WPA and compares it to WPE. The second part goes into detail how WPA can be cracked.

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I will explain the basics of securing your computer, will tell you what you need to secure it and give you alternatives if there are any. But first of all, all programs that I name will be freeware or open source. We want a secure computer but don´t want to pay hundreds of $$ for it. There will also be some geeks who will comment that program XY is way better and pro than the program I named and that only people with no security understanding whatsoever will use. Don´t listen to them, there are many factors that play a role in selecting a suitable software. I tried to find the best mix between security and user friendliness.

I will recommend the following type of programs for your personal computer: Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Rootkit Checker, Autorun Checker and Process Checker.

Wait, no Firewall ? Yes no firewall, I will give you a short answer why there will be no firewall. This seems unusual but just wait a little more and you will know.

Before we start, let me give you a short advice. Running all these tools in the background does not make your system secure. Its more secure yes, but not totally. Therefor you should still use common sense when you do something on the internet, e.g. don´t click on mail attachments that are unknown to you aso.

Lets Start:

Anti-Virus:

There are unfortunately thousands of free anti-virus products out there, what we need is the following. It should be up to date, have internet updates and use few resources.

I suggest Antivir Personal Edition, its free, always up to date, uses only few resources and has a very good virus recognition rate. Alternatives would be Avast Antivirus and AVG Free Edition

Anti-Spyware:

Ad-Aware SE Personal, small and good, enough said. As an alternative Microsoft’s own Spyware Tool.

Rootkit-Checker:

Everyone knows about Rootkits since the Sony debacle but only a few know how to check their pc for a rootkit. Rootkit Revealer from Sysinternals does the job. Run this tool from time to time, its not necessary to run it all the time.

Autorun Checker:

There are numerous places that can hold programs that autorun at startup, its a hassle to check them manually. Run a autorun checker from time to time to check on all places and programs and disable the ones you won´t need. Your system will probably boot faster if you disable some.

I suggest Autoruns 8.4 from Sysinternals.

Process Checker:

Process Explorer from sysinternals tells you which handles or dll process have opened or loaded, small great tool.

No Firewall ?

The reasoning behind this is pretty simple. A software firewall gives the user a false sense of security. If you look up bugtraq for example you see lots and lots of firewall vulnerabilities. Every software that runs on your system raises the danger of exploits and backdoors. Many trojans and worms already know ways to bypass firewall systems and use save routes (that means use programs that are safe to use for the firewall) to execute their malicious code.

Another problem that occurs is that if a malicious tool is installed with admin rights it could alter firewall functions. You find a simple code on netfirms.com that does press the YES button of Zonealarm automatically. There are of course other more serious possibilities.

The conclusion would be, that firewalls are not secure and malicious code can find ways around the firewall and even manipulate it. Therefor i suggest you don´t use a firewall but do something different.

I suggest you download this small tool called Shutdown Windows Servers and run it on your system. This should be sufficient to avoid most of the nasty worms and trojans that float around lately without the use of a firewall. .Common sense of course applies

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