Firewalls Explained
A firewall is like a brick wall between your computer and the Internet. Its main purpose is to protect your computer from attackers on the Internet by blocking services that you don’t use. For those that you do use, you have to punch a hole in the firewall. This hole allows you to use the Internet like normal with the services that you use. For instance, you punch a whole so you can check your email, so you can surf to a website, or use an Instant Messenger. There are two common types of firewalls.
1. Hardware firewall (recommended) – This is a physical device that you connect between your computer and Internet connection. The most basic and most common hardware firewall is a router. For the average use this is all that is needed. The router works as a firewall by dropping anything trying to go from the outside to the inside unless a request was made from the inside first. This requires no configuration on your part. There are more advanced firewalls such as the Astaro gateway and software that you put on a spare computer such as SmoothWall. These allow for much more configuration and options.
2. Software Firewall – this is software that you install on your computer. It works in a way similar to the hardware firewall, but it does it all inside of your computer. This kind of firewall adds the additional protection of asking you what kind of traffic you want going out of your computer. But, this could also be somewhat annoying because it pops up a window asking if you want to allow a certain program to access the Internet. Software firewalls can also be easily turned off by viruses and other malware (bad software). All modern Operating Systems come with software firewalls built in. After Windows XP SP2 the software firewall in windows XP is on by default. The same is true for windows Vista and windows 7 when it comes out. You can turn the firewall on in OS X in the System Preferences. It is not a bad idea to have the software firewall turned on for a couple of reasons. If a computer on your home network (if you have more than one computer at home) is infected with a virus it could potentially spread to other computers on your home network even if you have a hardware firewall because all of the computers would be on the inside of the firewall. It is also a good idea to have your software firewall on when you bring your laptop to other networks for this same reason.
-Zach
The most important thing that I can recommend to keep you safe on the Internet is to update, update and update. It is very important that you keep your computer up-to-date. Many of the updates for your Operating System (Window or Mac OS X) are security updates. These updates fix problems that could potentially allow an attacker into your computer. Without the update you are pretty much wide open. So, whenever you see that little yellow shield in the system tray (the area next to the clock in the lower right hand corner) on Windows XP, or the Software Update window appear on a mac, you should make sure to install the updates.
Many people claim that the updates have messed up their computer in the past. My response, it is better to update your computer and have a problem than to get a virus or be attacked in some other way because you didn’t update. Usually a problem due to an update will be fixed quickly, whereas removing a virus is usually a difficult process.
You don’t need to just update your Operating System. You also need to make sure that your Anti-viruses, spyware scanners and other software are updated. Your anti-virus and spyware scanners are useless against new viruses unless you keep them updated. Other software can have security flaws that make you more vulnerable as well, so it is important to keep all of your software updated.
In the past couple of days I have had two phone calls from people saying, “HELP, my computer is infected with hundreds of trojans and viruses.” Both, of course, were fake sites posing as an antivirus telling people to download their software to fix the problem. Both people clicked the button to remove (which is also the download button), and became suspicious. Then they both called me. The fix, simply close the window and everything is back to normal.
These fake AntiViruses are popping up all over the Internet these days and are fooling many. This leads me to my new blog idea. The average person has no idea (or very little) how to be secure on the Internet. My new blog will be for these people. Each week I plan on writing a new article addressing one security problem on the Internet and what to do about it. I would also like to answer any questions that people have about Internet Security, so if you have any send them my way.
~Zach
Review of Skimmer
Skimmer is a Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/Youtube Adobe Air app. The idea behind it is great, but after using it for a few days it has proven not to be the solution I was looking for. First, I like to have the feed stay where I left off so I can continue to read new updates later. Most apps will do this if you scroll down a post. Skimmer did this as well… sometimes. Other times it would jump right back to the top after a new post was received. I could live with this, however, after using it for a few days it stopped updating. It went for almost a day without receiving any updates, even when I manually hit the refresh button. This is a huge problem.
Overall, I like Skimmer and what it is trying to do. It is just needs some more work to make it more reliable. I will be going back to Twhirl. I just can’t seem to find anything I like better.
Google, you can do better…
A recent search for the exact url on Google turned up something interesting. A result that had nothing to do with the search query. Better yet, this result was an error message. You can see for yourself below. Come on Google, this shouldn’t happen. Maybe I’ll have to give Bing a try.
~Zach
A Testament to Support Departments
You always hear horror storied about companie’s support departments. Well, in the last couple of weeks I have had two good experiences.
1) I have a pair of Shure e2c earbuds. They have broken 3 times. Something always goes wrong with one of the wires. Once the insulation cracked and started to come off. The other two times something happened inside the cord that caused the earbud to go on and off when the wire was moved around. All three times Shure’s service department has been very helpful. You send in the earbuds and they send you a new pair to replace the broken ones. This time they are sending the newer model because I was tired of having to continue to send them back. Hopefully the new model has a better insulation on the cord.
2) I purchased a number of songs from the iTunes music store. After purchasing them it turned out that I had already purchased one of the songs. Once I received the bill I clicked on the link to report a problem. I chose the option for “I already own this song” and submitted the report. The next day they gave me a credit to get a different song.
Both of these experiences have been handled entirely by email and have been very good. No waiting on the phone and relatively quick responses.
~Zach
Branding bars and frames…
I have recently noticed that a number of sites are moving all of their external links to a model where they put a branded bar across the top of the screen and then put the page in a frame below the bar. I do not like this. Here are the resons… 1) I use NoScript on firefox. NoScript by default blocks frames for a very good reason. Frames allow for “click jacking” attacks. So, everytime I click on a link on one of the sites I have to allow the site to load in a frame. This is a pain. 2) You no longer see the URL for the sit you are visiting in the address bar. 3) Why should these sites be able to keep their branding on an external page? 4) They use up more valuable space when you have a short screen. Screens on laptops do not usually have very many lines of resolution, so this bar makes the area to view the site that much smaller. Maybe it is just me, but I do not like these bars.
Places I have noticed them: digg.com, facebook.com
-Zach
Firefox/Google
An interesting thing happened to me today with Firefox on OSX and Google. For some reason, only in Firefox a lot of the text on Google was missing. The underlines indicating the links were still there, but all the text had vanished. As far as I can tell Google was the only site affected, and it seems to have been only my computer. Google looked fine on other computers at the same time. Restarting Firefox fixed the problem.
Zach
Thoughts…
I was thinking about the idea of open wireless networks and why there wouldn’t be a way to have a “secure” open wireless network. This is my thought on how this could possibly be implemented. Would it not be possible for a wireless router to randomly generate WPA keys which were either sent to the end user’s computer and then used, or to have a SSL default page when joining the network that would display the key which if it was then used to connect to the network would allow secure, open access. Obviously, these random keys would only be valid for one connection. When you want to join the network again you would be then given a new random key. Also, the router would have to be implemented so that the local machines could not see each other, only the WAN port. Would this kind of a system work? If so, why haven’t we seen this type of thing out there? Or have I just not come across it? If anyone reading this knows of a system like this please send me a tweet (@tuds89) with information about it.
~Zach
New iPod Shuffle
I just heard about the new iPod Shuffle. It looks like a great idea. Smaller than ever, simpler than ever, but useless to me (I think). You have to use the Apple earbuds in order for the thing to function in any usable manner. I hate the apple earbuds, so I guess I won’t be getting one. Even if they come out with an adapter to use with normal headphones it would still be inconvenient and not something I would use. But, I guess that is Apple for you. Make a product that it proprietary to their own accessories, but make it a great design. It’s a great little player, but only if you want to use the Apple earbuds. I’ll stick with the larger versions.
~Zach
