How to spot strangers on your computer..and keep them out.

reply to post by sixswornsermon

Thank you. And yes, as you say, good operators in the sneaky games that hackers play are very hard to track.

Meanwhile, OP, if you're not using a good cleaner to clear out the junky "temporary" files on your computer and especially those nasty LSO's, I'd recommend you do. I use CCleaner at least daily and often more frequently. Good product -- and it's freeware -- and lightweight at around 3MB or so. You can find it at all the reliable, safe download sites, like majorgeeks, filehippo, download (dot) com and so on, or direct from the makers at piriform. Perfect for getting rid of all the junk that otherwise just builds up and can slow down your comp.

Stay away from any sites that want you to pay (even just small $) for freeware like CCleaner, or even the bigger freeware programs like OpenOffice or Ubuntu. They are available free from their makers and if someone wants you to pay, ( a) they're ripping you off and probably doing so illegally and ( b) it's possible their version of the software is -- shall we say -- "tainted".

Mike

www.microsoft.com...

Microsoft security essentials if you have no anti-virus free from microsoft anti-virus malware detection
and firewall

www.zonealarm.com...

Zone Alarms is a great free firewall.


www.lavasoft.com...

Ad-ware the best mal-ware detector and scanner there is and it is free
will take care of all the nasty buggers.

I suggest if you have the money to get ESET NOD 32
www.eset.com...
Best anti-virus there is.

Originally posted by Hessling
I have to subscribe to this thread.

I'm experiencing a similar problem. My hard drive just chatters like a bunch of monkeys in a jungle whenever I go on the Internet. Also, my Internet speed seems to get slower and slower.

Oh, and I have McAfee installed BTW. (Which still allowed the Google Redirect virus to show up on my computer. Bang up job McAfee! Full system scans after the fact stated everything was hunky-dory. Thanks again McAfee!)

Another weird thing is that a friend of mine says he got notified by his ISP that his bandwidth usage was exceedingly high. I asked him if he had any idea what would cause this (streaming Netflix or something like that). He said there was nothing like that running on his computer. He doesn't even have Netflix on his pc.

I'd also like to know if there is any way of monitoring what a person's Internet input/output was coming/going to.

Is there such a method?

edit on 28-9-2011 by Hessling because: (no reason given)

mcafee will slow your computer down to a crawl and it constantly downloads virus info....i've taken out norton and mcafee for the same reasons on many computers....go to snapfiles.com/freeware/ and find the virus tools, then download microsoft security essentials, runs better......

reply to post by JustMike


More good advice.

One last post from me, then I'm out:

Not sure about cc cleaner, but with the malware bytes FULL VERSION (as somebody suggested using earlier) you can schedule updates o the definitions, as well as scans of the system.

Makes life easier!!!!!

Originally posted by sixswornsermon
6. Run wireshark on your network and review dump. Have fun!

This was going to be my suggestion. Turn everything off, kill all processes, and see what traffic is going through your computer still. You can watch all of the data going to and from your computer in real time. You can trace any suspicious IPs if you'd like (see if they come from DC )

Also, running the command prompt & "netstat -n" or "netstat -b" will give you a good idea who's connected, and which programs are connecting to another machine.

Edit to add: this is a method more for people that know what to look for.

Are you guys still living in 1999? Paid antivirus software has gone the way of Windows 3.1. McAfee and Norton are two that I personally despise for being entirely useless. AVG and Avast are also things to avoid. You want my personal security suite that's never been breached all the way? Avira (free), Malwarebytes (free) and Spybot S&D (free). But the most important thing for computer security is intelligence. Practice downloading discipline. I've got reams of stuff downloaded without an issue. Second, know your enemy. A good number of viruses can only be killed by registry edits. Learn how.

reply to post by jessejamesxx


I know I said one more post, but since you brought up wireshark again, I will make one more suggestion:

Run wireshark for a few hours during your peak usage time with as many services / programs on the host computer disabled.

Pore through the capture, isolating interesting data streams.

Use formost , a data carving tool, which will allow you to reconstruct the contents of a data stream.

Tutorial for Data Carving

You never know what might be going on in your network unless you look!!!!

reply to post by JustMike


Wow...good stuff, thanks.

The info in this thread will sure help a lot of people out.

reply to post by Hessling


People seriously use McAfee?

Insanity.

There's no telling what kind of back doors our Gov. has built-in to all of our computers...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The only way to not be spied on is to never go on the Web.

Originally posted by sixswornsermon
reply to post by JustMike

 

Nice explanation on netstat commands.

For the really paranoid:

Don't forget that a competent intruder would alter logs to cover their tracks, and alter default windows forensic tools to hide connections and running processes.

Yes, definitely tools and applications can be trojaned (meaning that the application you think you are running is really a simulation of that application because the executable was replaced by the hack and the trojaned application will only report what they want it to report) ... best bet if you would like to be sure this isn't the case is to run an anti-virus scan from a Live CD(please peruse the definition of such at your own leisure) or run software such as Tripwire on a freshly installed system.

There are some really great live CDs available; Ultimate Boot CD, back traq etc... plenty to explore and read about. Basically a live CD is an operating system you boot to from CD Rom that loads in RAM, so nothing on your harddrive is actually utilized in its operation... this allows for unfettered access to files and systems on harddrives and removable media without the possibility of a trojans or infection (well except hyper-v bootloader viruses and BIOS hacks but I digress...).

Also, fun poking around can be found with a fiddle, well Fiddler 2 to be exact It is a "Web debugging proxy" that acts as a software proxy on your network stack displaying info on any TCP port not just 80 (the unecrypted web's TCP port) that is being opened from your PC.

Well most, let's just say where there's a will there's a way. If someone wants to really hide from you they can, they will and there's nothing you can do about it or software you can find that will matter. Just be safe and have some common web sense as others have mentioned earlier, don't go click happy. If you find yourself on the receiving end of some inscrutable people, unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that except turn off the PC. But even then...

There's always someone smarter / more devious / more informed when it comes to technology.

Possibilities are endless, that's the beauty of it!

Cheers and good luck.

reply to post by JustMike


Is it true that no firewall will ever be 100% safe? Can you explain why a computer connected to the internet will always be hackable...if that is true ofcourse.

And if so what about banks....? Is it possible to hack banks and their credit accounts if you know how to write hack-software?

this is a good site to see if you are open for attacks. it probes your ports and see if any thing is

open.

www.grc.com...

click on shields up.

this is my screen shot

img.abovetopsecret.com...

Some good advice here, but one thing I don't see. Never run windows in the administrator account. Any virus or worm (whatever malware) has administrative rights when you do this. This is one of the great things about Linux. There is a solution though, and it's called sudown. It lets you run in your administrator account, but asks for the password on vital things like Linux does. This prevents the malware from doing what it wants.

Here's the link to the info and free download...

sudown for WinXP

There's another similar program out there which is also free, but I can't remember the name. Hope this helps...