motors Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 Would disabling autorun be enough to prevent a hacksaw hack, assuming one's account on a computer is active but password protected? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joerg Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 Certainly not. You just set the necessary skill level to own your machine higher. It still can be executed by social engineering andy by your own absence of mind. Then you have to differentiate between hacksaw and switchblade, while the hacksaw package is usually integrated in the latter. If you want to protect yourself from the emailing thumbdrive content program, you have to use: 1) non-windows operating system (scnr) 2) firewall (questionable) 3) antivirus software 4) brain 1.0 I personally favorise the first solution as it's the most secure one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motors Posted June 25, 2008 Author Share Posted June 25, 2008 Thanks. I suspected as much. The next laptop I get will not be running any version of Windows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joerg Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 Do you plan to get FreeDOS to work on it? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
motors Posted June 25, 2008 Author Share Posted June 25, 2008 No, something more mainstream like Ubuntu. I'm a pretty big noob to when it comes to working with software outside of my comfort zone, right now desperately trying to change that. I thought about getting FreeDOS for one of my older computers out of curiosity (I started using computers after Windows became the de facto OS). Also, do you know any good sites for helping one become familiar with Visual Studio 2008? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joerg Posted June 25, 2008 Share Posted June 25, 2008 Sorry, but try to ask your favored search engine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 Thanks. I suspected as much. The next laptop I get will not be running any version of Windows. No, see, you're missing the point. It's not that Windows is insecure*, it's the fact that nothing is 100% secure and never will be. flavours of BSD, flavours of DOS, Windows, OSX, one of the zillion Linux distros, whatever, they're all ownable given the right circumstances. *Ok, so Windows isn't perfect, but despite 20-30 years of advertising, computers are not, never were, and never will be easy to use. We can pretend they are and we can teach users the basics, just enough to get along, but they'll never really know how to use a computer. People don't know security, and you need to know security to have any chance of not getting your machine compromised. In security, I include social engineering attacks, I include watching where your software comes from, I include downloading random shit from P2P networks and blindly running it and I also include knowing when something's up with your machine(s) or network(s). Does Joe Shmoe know that? No, no he doesn't, so regardless of the operating system, he stands almost zero chance of surviving online. To conclude, if you're not ignorant then there's absolutely no problem with running Windows, it's easy to avoid getting owned most of the time by staying aware of what your system's doing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 1) non-windows operating system (scnr) [snip] I personally favorise the first solution as it's the most secure one. That's just misinformation. I'm really fucking bored of everyone complaining that Windows is insecure. Use a little common sense and you won't be the guy getting 6 million popups a minute, trojans out the wazzoo and an unbootable hosed system. Windows is perfectly fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 Windows is perfectly fine. Be careful when using 'perfect' or any variant there of, when talking about software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeoneE1se Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 perfectly fine only means fine and I use windows and run no AV no anti-spyware and have neither Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joerg Posted June 27, 2008 Share Posted June 27, 2008 I know that it seemed just like another "fuck windows use $foobar" comment, but I gave up telling people how they should behave if they want use a clean machine. So my answer is generally $foobar, mainly because the switchblade is not designed to run on a $foobar machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 I know that it seemed just like another "fuck windows use $foobar" comment, but I gave up telling people how they should behave if they want use a clean machine. So my answer is generally $foobar, mainly because the switchblade is not designed to run on a $foobar machine. Fair tactic, but what about when $foobar gets hit with malware? It's going to happen at some point, however unlikely it is, and frankly I think if someone has trouble finding their way around a Windows machine I think they'd have just as much trouble finding their way around a $foobar machine, because it's likely that $foobar isn't suitable for a desktop and isn't user friendly when it comes to de-crapifying machines (with one or two exceptions). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 At the end of the day a dumb user, weak or non-existent passwords and a total disregard for security will sink a computer faster than a users choice of OS. The best practice is to seperate the OS from the data and plan for the OS to be easy to completely replace. As for stopping the USB hacks, there are some group policy settings which can be used to disable USB ports, and you can physically secure them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeoneE1se Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 And you can set up cameras to watch and then hire strong mean thugs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joerg Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 @SomeoneE1se: Very good idea, but they have to be trained to detect and resist social engineering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SysOps Posted July 9, 2008 Share Posted July 9, 2008 Disable USB in BIOS... (like all GOV Secure PCs) Disable User Privileges... Shoot that ID10T computer guy (every place has one.. .. ) put your PC in a X09 Safe... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shido Posted July 21, 2008 Share Posted July 21, 2008 Just disable the usb ports and keep a good av Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zimmer Posted July 23, 2008 Share Posted July 23, 2008 If it is a U3 device to start the exploit do just have disable cd autorun or do you have to do even more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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