Real-world antivirus measures
Silverlock wrote:
Finally someone gives useful advice
My technopeasant mother runs a Win98SE box, and prevailed upon me to help her do what can be done for security -- and particularly to put together an antivirus regime that actually works. So (among other things), I buried MS-Outlook Express and MS Internet Explorer in the deepest pit I could find, made very sure that MS-Outlook wasn't around at all, and installed Eudora, Mozilla Firebird, AbiWord, and OpenOffice.org.
Because of various convulsions in her newspapers and magazines about whatever is the Microsoft virus du jour, she's forever bothering me about whether she should install "antivirus software" to protect her against this-or-that virus. So, about once every couple of months, I have to re-explain to her the Moen Family Antivirus Plan:
1. Don't run untrustworthy software.
2. Don't run software that autoruns untrustworthy software on your behalf.
3. Have means of recovery in place for various mishaps.
As longtime security-watchers will already know, shitcanning MS-Outlook Express, MS Internet Explorer, and MS-Outlook wins 98% of the battle immediately, because those applications' mindblowingly stupid handling of "active content" is the Typhoid Mary for practically all Microsoft viruses. And substituting AbiWord and OpenOffice.org for MS-Office applications eliminates VBA macro viruses, the other main scourge (well, malware scourge, anyway) of Microsoft software users.
She is on notice that she has big problems in the Rule #3 area for lack of (1) meaningful backup, and (2) usable means to reinstall some of her key software, if necessary. But that's a problem of broader scope, in which malware is merely an also-ran threat compared to hardware/software failure or user-induced mishap of other sorts. (After several iterations, she now understands what I mean when I say she's always wielding root-user authority.)
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
