Brian Dye, senior
vice-president for information security at Symantec, has declared
antivirus as “dead”. With a detection rate of only 45%, you
can’t rely on antivirus to protect your computer from malware
infections. Now what?
Being careful
with opening email attachments and what websites you visit is
important but doesn’t mean you will never be fooled. If you have
ever watched a magician perform a trick and couldn’t figure out
immediately how that trick was performed, then you are capable of
being fooled. Experienced cyber criminals are experts at scamming
and the art of illusion. Besides, most people use Facebook and other
social media sites which have become a popular attack approach. Cyber
criminals have enjoyed a 70% success rate with malware spread through
social media.
If you assume
your computer will crash or will suddenly experience performance
issues, and that is how you will know you’ve been hacked, think
again. Cyber criminals will NOT crash your computer. That would
defeat their purpose. Their aim is to infiltrate your computer to
pilfer data. After their done they will use your computer to cover
their tracks so their attacks on other computers will appear to
originate from your computer. Besides, even if your computer
performance takes a dump, how are you going to remove the infection
if the antivirus or similar detection tool can’t find the source of
the infection?
Obviously, a new
approach to computer protection is required. First, would be an
operating environment that is impervious to infections. One approach
would be to change you operating system to Linux. Millions of
malware infections are roaming around on the Internet designed for
Windows. There are fewer malware infections designed for a Mac.
Still the number of malware designed for a Mac is close to one
million. Linux on the other hand has had less than 100 malware
designed to attack it. Part of the reason is due to Linux lack of
use along and the numerous different versions. Linux has had a
reputation of being difficult to learn and use. However, there is a
new version that has been designed for Windows users called Zorin.
Even so, you may still find learning a new operating system to much
of a challenge.
A new technology
known as virtualization may provide an approach that has promise.
The technology isolates an application from the rest of the operating
system. It can also isolate and entire operating system environment.
The benefit is that whatever happens in that isolated environment
stays in that environment and won’t affect the rest of your
computer. An example of software that uses application
virtualization is Sandboxie. If you open your browser (Internet
Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc) within Sandboxie, and if you go to a
website that has malware, the malware will be isolated in the
Sandboxie environment and will not infect your computer. Sandboxie
can be configured to erase all activity in a session so that you can
start with a clean slate each time you open a program. That means
any malware will not only be isolated, but at the end of the session
will be erased. This technology is still relatively new and still
needs some work in the area of usability for the average user. But,
power users should have no problem installing it and using it.
I will have more
suggestions in future blogs, so stay tuned.
Check out…
Sandboxie
http://www.sandboxie.com/
Zorin
http://zorin-os.com/
