Cookie WhiteList with Buttons

Although there is an extension that removes cookies per website called “Remove Cookies for Site” believe it or not, I can’t find an extension that will selectively allow cookies only on websites you want. Cookie Whitelist for Firefox is perfect in this respect.

Better Privacy

Better Privacy removes Flash Cookies when you close Firefox preventing websites tracking you over a number of sessions. It is possible to install a flash blockersuch as FlashBlock that will block “supercookies” but BetterPrivacy is a better option for me.

Link Checker Finjan Secure Browsing

WOT is available for Chrome (Web Of Trust) as a link rating extension similar to Siteadvisor by Mcafee but these do not scan links on the fly. Whoops whilst researching this I have found that AVG linkscanner does work with it’s active shield in Chrome (the bit that scans the pages before you click on them) but the search shield search results bit doesn’t. It might be best combining WOT with AVG. Finjan SecureBrowsing for Firefox however provides real-time scanning of search results.

Ghostery

Ghostery blocks web bugs -“Web bugs are hidden scripts that track your behaviour and are used by the sites you visit to understand their own audience.”

Nothing I can find can replace this great extension but according to MediaPost.com a Chrome version is in the pipeline.

NoScript

According to Giorgio Maone developer of Noscript “the technology infrastructure to make it possible is not there yet” although it sounds like he is keen to develop Noscript for Chrome. This is a shame as although it is possible to disable Javascript in Chrome it’s not possible on a site by site basis. Not sure how long we’ll need to wait for this one…
To make Chrome more private or secure there are a couple of other options:

1. Sandbox Chrome – Use Sandboxie to prevent anything from leaking out of your browser into your computer.
2. Use a proxy filter like Privoxy, this will remove ads and disable lots of annoying web page features (relatively difficult to setup for newbies).

Do you know of any good Chrome Security Extensions, let me know in the comments..

Photo by Steve Nagata on Flickr

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Maybe your antivirus will stop the malware but only if it has the Malware’s signature. This software is designed to stop programs executing from your USB flash drive or memory stick unless you want them to.  Auto starting executables are locked and can be deleted if you think they may be malicious. This is a better option than just blankly stopping all Autoruns settings on a computer.

It runs at startup and shouldn’t slow your system down. I have looked at other USB Security Freeware before but this app looks excellent in my opinion. If you share Dongles with friends (no pun intented) then this open source software (free) is essential.

No Autorun – USB Disk Virus Protection by qycaitian

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Online Web Safety Scan

AVG Web Safety Scan is a simple URL (web address) scanner. It will tell you if a page is safe to visit or not by scanning for malware with A.V.G. on the page.

Web URL Scanner

Norton Safeweb

Norton Safeweb will quickly tell you if a webpage is safe to visit by scanning with Norton’s scan engine’s.

Norton Safeweb

No Virus Thanks Bad I.P Detector

A great one stop solution (if you know the I.P. address) to see if a website is infected is from NovirusThanks.org. It’s called the Bad I.P. Detector and submit’s the I.P. address to 13 seperate online URL databases and link scanners to see if an URL is infected. Remember though that a website may share it’s I.P. with other websites if it is using shared and not dedicated hosting.

If you are a website owner then this site could be good place to check if other sites sharing your I.P. are giving your web site a bad name.

No Virus Thanks

No of any other web URL scanners? Let me know in the comments…

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Another problem is that they are not cleaned by your browser when you clear your browsers cache. Luckily there are several ways to manage or remove flash cookies. We have looked at Super Cookies before in March 2009 and compared them to normal web cookies.

Programs to Delete Flash Cookies (Super Cookies)

1. Ccleaner Deletes Flash Cookies

Already using Ccleaner? Don’t worry your covered as the option below shows that LSO’s will be removed by CCleaner.

2. Flash Cookie Cleaner

Consumersoft’s Flash Cookie Cleaner will either open a window showing the directory with flash cookies in or will delete all flash cookies.

3. Flash Cookies View by Nirsoft

Another great app from Nirsoft who get mentioned frequently on JonnysBlog. Flash Cookies View displays each cookie and also their contents. The contents of the cookies can be saved to a txt file.

4. BetterPrivacy

An effective plugin for Firefox is BetterPrivacy. It automatically removes Flash Cookies when Firefox exits.

If you use Firefox then this may be the easiest option for you.

Other ways of deleting LSO’s :

Alternatively LSO’s / Flash Cookies can be managed using the instructions from Adobe Macromedia themselves via the Website Storage Settings Panel.

Flash cookies can also be manually deleted by yourself by navigating to C:\Users\(Your Profile Name)\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia.com\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\(Web Site / App Path).

How do you manage Super Cookies? Let us know in the comments…

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If you run this program and your security software leaps in and prevents it from happening, then great, if not there may be a couple of reasons why.

1/. The trojan has worked and your security software isn’t too good.

2/. You have a very good virus scanner but this isn’t detected by the scanner as it’s seen as a testing tool…

If your security software jumps in and detects this tool immediately this may not be too great necessarily neither – why?

If your software relies on signatures alone it may not pick up the next slightly different non publicly available Trojan.

If the tool was detected because of it’s bad behaviour though…looking at your files…displaying them on a web page etc… then your software may be protecting you in a behaviour based way.

I am running Microsoft Security Essentials – signatures only. I also have PCTools Threatfire..behaviour based monitoring.

Threatfire caught it and MSE did not.

Conclusion… Layered Security is usually best in my opinion.

I’m not saying install threatfire –  although I like it, but maybe have a good firewall at least.

Trustware Free Trojan Demo

Did you pass the test? Let me know in the comments..

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Malawares’ download is extremely small for a scanner at 1mb but this is due to the fact it is a cloud based scanner and will look at any processes it is unsure of “in the cloud” – by going online and checking against a continually growing database of signatures.

This product is not a real time scanner like Panda Cloud AV (which ways in at 21mb at the mo) and is meant to be used every so often to complement your av or from a usb stick.

The basic idea behind MalAware was to create build the smallest possible (1 mb) and the fastest possible malware scanner (scan <1 min) that will only provide an indication of whether a PC is infected with malware or not.

Malawares’ scan was extremely quick at under a minute and correctly found nothing on my clean machine.

As you can see once a scan is finished you get the hard sell to buy a-squared anti-malware as the program itself will not remove anything.

I think this is a great little tool to have on a usb stick to discover if a pc is infested or not and has great backing from Emisoft. It’s worth a scan on your system as a nice second opinion.

However it won’t be the first tool I break out on a PC I suspect has Malware on. I’ll stick to superantispyware and Avira.

MalAware works on XP / Vista / 7  -all 32 and 64 editions.

Used MalAware Yet?

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It’s always a good idea to update Plugins as older versions often have security issues or holes.

Via theregister

Know of any other ways to keep up to date…let me know in the comments

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Privacy from others with access to the same computer.

Most people know that when you browse the web, the url’s of the websites that you visit are stored in your browsers history. Along with this a lot of other information is cached and stored so that when you revisit the same website and the same image is required, it loads from your hard drive (much quicker) rather than downloading the same content.

This speeds things up considerably for day to day surfing and was a godsend for dialup users. Unfortunately not everyone wants the sites they have visited to be available for perusal by others with access to the same computer.

Content from the cache can be viewed easily within your browser or by using 3rd party programs such as…

Internet explorer cache viewer or  / Firefox cache viewer both by Nirsoft who have other great freeware applications.

Why would I not want people to see what sites I’ve visited?

Perhaps you want to keep a gift purchase private or keep an illness a secret as well as the more obvious pron surfing hiding.

How can I hide my surfing activities?

Luckily in most browsers there is the ability to either clear your history and any offline (cached) content, or to browse privately. Browsing privately simply prevents sites from storing content on your hard drive, all the surf history and content will be deleted when you exit the browser.

Firefox has Private Browsing

Google Chrome has Incognito

Internet Explorer has InPrivate

If you want to clean all of these browsers histories with a freeware application then check out my roundup of computer cleaners in which I recommend CCleaner.

You can ask Ccleaner to not delete certain cookies from your browser if you so wish. This will keep you logged in or preserve the settings of the website you have set.

Privacy on the website you are visiting.

It is difficult to keep yourself private from the website you are visiting as you will be giving a lot of information away to them when asking for the page.

The information given away by your browser is surprisingly detailed and can be seen on Irongeek’s browser revealing site.

Obviously this isn’t a problem if you don’t mind the website knowing all this…

Should I worry about what a website can see about me?

In most instances not really. The website may need to know you have flash and JavaScript enabled so that it can serve its content to you properly. It may need to see that you are using the iphone rather than Firefox to view the page so it sends you a condensed or optimised version.

On the other hand  – some people believe that too much information is given away. Cookies record how long you are on a website, which pages you look at and more. Whilst some scripts can gain information about your computer and use that info to exploit your browser and deliver malware (if you stumble onto the wrong website).

How can I surf safer and prevent leaking too much information through my browser?

There are a few ways to prevent your browser showing too much information.

1). Surf using addons that tell your browser not to leak too much info:

There are a number of apps and browser extensions that can help mask who you are on the internet and not give too much info away. If you are using Firefox then I suggest that you browse through the Privacy section of the Firefox addons site.

Some useful Firefox extensions include:

Cookie whitelist: Only allow the cookies you want.

Noscript or Yesscript: Disable or enable scripts and allow them on a website by website basis.

BetterPrivacy can protect you from flash (super) cookies.

For more addons have a look at my top ten addons.

2). Surf via a proxy.

When surfing via a proxy you are using another computer to look at the info for you and send it to you. This means you are hidden from the website and they can’t see your I.P. address as easily. There are many free web proxies out there if you simply google “free web proxy.” It might be worth reading a little more about proxies before using them as there can be security risks involved.

It is also possible to use a proxy on your computer to filter possible privacy leaks out -although you are still directly connected and giving the website your IP.

A couple of freeware programs that are able to filter what your browser allows in and out are Privoxy and Proxomitron.

Privoxy is easier to play with in my eyes and works out of the box as I like it. It’s the one I have running currently on my computer.

Proxomitron is more difficult to useI’d say but you are able to do more with it.

Both were developed with blocking adverts in mind and are very effective at doing so.

Part two (coming soon) will include:

Protecting your privacy:

• From your ISP
• From third party sites
• When using an internet cafe.
• Tor and other services

Picture by Sunside

Please let me know your thoughts on privacy in the comments..

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This is the second part of JonnysBlog’s  How To Test Your Computer’s Security Guide. The first part can be found here – Security Guide Part One.

Keylogger Test

Zemana have made a keylogger simulation application that will capture keystrokes from another window. It is only a simulation as it is not hidden from view and doesn’t attempt to do anything malicious with the captured data as a real keylogger would. It should be detected as an application that is trying to steal your key inputs by your security software.

Make sure it doesn’t get detected just by it’s signature – i.e. when you run it, but that it get’s detected when it begins logging your keys. The next keylogger might not have a signature that your av picks up but your av should detect the keylogger is trying to do something anomalous – behavioural detection.  This is generally the area of a good behaviour blocker, anti-keylogger or intrusion prevention program. Some firewalls may detect this behaviour but some won’t..

Zemana Keylogger Test

One way of preventing a keylogger working is to use the free  Keyscrambler Personal, this software will work in your browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer) and encrypt the things you type into web forms. It does not protect you in other programs but there are paid versions that can do this.

System Shutdown Simulator – SSS

There are a couple of areas of security this app will help test but it’s primary aim is to detect when your computer is shutting down and then exploit your computer and upload info to a server. It waits for the shutdown as this is when your security apps will be shutting down too. This is a potential way that malware may try and infect your system.

You can select other ways it can test your security:

1. It can create the Eicar Virus test file as described in part one.
2. It can create an autostarting registry entry – a simple way malware can start.
3. Attempts to download and execute a file -  testing your firewall.

Download the System Shutdown Simulator

Previously on Jonnysblog I have shown how to build a free security suite that should be able to withstand most threat out there at the moment.

Do you know of any security software testing tools I may have missed?…Let me know of any in the comments.

Photo by mikebaird on Flickr

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It may be my system, it may be the other software I run causing conflicts, but I’m not so sure. I’ve tried the same 32 bit versions of the programs on my 32 bit vista laptop with similar problems. There aren’t that many free x64 bit firewalls to my knowledge but the ones I’ve tried have had the following problems:

PrivateFirewall: Crashes and disappears when some new programs try to connect to the internet such as Picasa3 and others.

Comodo: Causes svchost.exe to run at 100% on one cpu and I seem to gain Network card profiles when using this firewall.

PCTools Firewall: Every few weeks the computer would hang and when restarted the firewall would have lost all settings and have to be retrained.

Outpost Firewall Free: No problems as such but doesn’t update itself. You have to manually download and install a new version.

These are all well known (except perhaps Private Firewall) apps and all well rated in Matousec’s Firewall Challenge.

PrivateFirewall was great, not overly busy but if something new was opened it knew about it. It also seemed very light. Comodo is overly talky to me but is always ahead of other firewalls in intrusion prevention and leak test results. Somehow it didn’t work well on my 64 bit computer but works fine on my 32 bit vista machine.

PCtools I like and tend to install on family and friends computers as it’s easy to use and gives clear instructions and warnings. It has only crashed twice or has reset it’s settings after the computer has crashed. The second time was enough for me though. A shame really.

If all these firewalls worked, I would choose PrivateFirewall, It just seems to have the right balance of strong protection without nagging too much.

Unfortunately I may have to revert to Agnitum’s Outpost and manually reinstall when I hear of (the not very well publicised) updates. Ah well at least they are free…Maybe someone can suggest another good alternate…

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