- A Chromebook offers Defensive Computing when traveling February 14, 2014
- The Adobe Reader consumes mass quantities of hard drive space February 6, 2014
- How and why to check port 32764 on your router January 27, 2014
- Software bugs as weapons July 16, 2013
- Perfect Forward Secrecy can block the NSA from secure web pages, but no one uses it June 21, 2013
- Wi-Fi’s dirty secret of evil twins June 12, 2013
- Steve Gibson’s Fingerprint service detects SSL man in the middle spying April 14, 2013
- Defensively installing bug fixes May 25, 2012
- Peeking under the hood of Chrome browser reveals CPU hog May 18, 2012
- Detecting Shockwave May 9, 2012
- The rust around Firefox April 29, 2012
- A warning for New York Yankee fans April 19, 2012
- Dealing with a bad hard drive March 19, 2012
- Chrome browser updated again. Not that there’s anything wrong with that In fact, it’s great. March 10, 2012
Routers released since 2007 support an easy setup mode called Wireless Protected Setup (WPS) designed for end users that are not able to login to the router and configure, WPA and its options. The problem, discovered at the end of 2011, is that WPS is broken and a persistent attacker can use WPS to learn the password for the wireless network. On some routers, even when WPS appears to be disabled, it is not and the router is still vulnerable to attack. For more see: WiFi Routers: Oldies are Goodies January 10, 2012
12 reasons not to use Internet Explorer, ever June 30, 2011
Five approaches for defending a Windows PC prove their worth June 21, 2011
Defending yourself from the Flash Player June 6, 2011
The New York Times fails readers again June 4, 2011
Why the bad guys are winning June 1, 2011
Defending against Firefox extensions that may spy on you May 25, 2011
The big data breach at Email Service Provider Epsilon prompted some blogs by Michael Horowitz.
- Miserably bad advice about email April 9, 2011
- Sandboxie offers spear phishing protection April 8, 2011
- Spear Phishing: the real danger behind the Epsilon data breach April 6, 2011
Malicous software can be very good at defending itself. Thus, the best way to remove it, is not to let it run in the first place. You can do this by booting the machine from a CD and running an operating system on the CD that treats the C disk as a data disk. See this series of articles:
The Best Way to Remove Viruses, Spyware and other Malware (Part 1) May 19, 2009
How to Remove Malware: Booting from a CD (Part 2) June 16,2009
The Best Way to Remove Viruses and Malware: The Clean-Up (Part 3) July 20,2009
Michael Horowitz has a Defensive Computing blog at Computerworld.com with assorted tech tips, including a series of articles on protecting your computer from USB flash drives that contain malware. The Conficker worm is among many others that spread by infecting a USB flash drive.
- The best way to disable Autorun for protection from infected USB flash drives
- Test your defenses against malicious USB flash drives
