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2024-10-25 eBay Account Hijacked
The true story of a friend trying to answer questions for an item he was selling on eBay and became a victim of Cross Site Scripting. In this article we take a deeper look at this vulnerability and what you can do to prevent getting your cookies stolen. If you sell anything on eBay, you'll want to read this article.
2024-11-20 Does a home user need a router for added security?
I have read all of your reviews on
the virus software companies. My question is; does a home user need a
router for added security? I have been told by many who use computers
that it's a good idea. The only one who said that I should "take it
back to the store", was a tech support worker at my ISP. Well what is
your opinion?
Thank You, Mr. Ford
To Have or Not to Have... that is the question.
To
answer the question, should you install a router, we need to address
what functions the router adds, and which of these functions are
security related. Then, look if these services and functions are being
supplies elsewhere.
2024-11-13 Internet Child Safety
I feel on my heart to educate readers about an extremely important subject if you have children. Protecting your children against the obscene and graphic pornography that is so easily accessible on the Internet. On average, pornography is only four clicks away from any given website. The majority of children are surfing the Internet with little or no protection preventing them from harmful material.
read moreUnderstanding Heuristics
Date: 2024-10-09
Wikipedia defines heuristics as "a technique designed
to solve a problem that ignores whether the solution can be proven correct, but
which usually produces a good solution or solves a simpler problem that
contains or intersects with the solution of the more complex problem."
To help explain heuristics let's look at the way traditional antivirus programs
work. They have a process that runs in real-time on your computer to check each
and every file from the sources you tell it to check, such as email, media, and
Internet download. What is the process looking for in the files? It's looking
for anything in the files that matches the antiviruses definition files. The
definition files contain a list of known virus and what the actual code of
those viruses look like. It's like watching people going through a check point
and checking a book of mug shots at the same time to try to identify a known
felon.
Heuristics steps it up a notch. It looks at the patterns, code method, of those
known viruses and it looks for similar code that might be trying to do
something similar, even though it does not have a definition file to prove the
code is destructive. Using our known felon analogy, it would be like reading
the summary of what these felons were doing before they were arrested. Some
might have been peeking through windows; some may have been lurking in dark
alleyways, other wearing dark clothing at night. There is nothing illegal with
any of those things, just suspicious. That's enough for heuristics to stop them
right then and there before the crime is committed.
The downside of heuristics is some of those acts may have been legitimate. And
the process takes slightly more resources than tradition pattern file checking.
All in all, it's a great technology in the development of proactive security
solutions. Armed with a security product that includes heuristics can really
give you an advantage in today's onslaught of virus mutations.
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