An alternate way of preventing hacks

[Questionable]

I found out a pretty nice way to prevent hacking occurrence to a minimum. You guys can try this out if you want added safety. But basically I run a dual-boot on my laptop VISTA and XP. XP of course just for FFXI, and Vista normal surfing.

All the necessary precautions are still in place as usual such as noscript, AV, spyware etc.

Now, if somehow some kind of hacking malware gets on your computer while you are in Vista mode, it can still search directories or whatever to find your FFXI info, if it's an advanced one. I'm assuming that it can do this, so why not encrypt the FFXI data as a drive using AES 256 encryption. Here's the links to the sites:

http://wiki.neocortex.dk/index.php/A...indows_&_Linux

Basically tells some details about this encryption and using this:

http://www.scherrer.cc/crypt/

You can encrypt a partition as a file basically and mount it as a drive. So all your ffxi information user data is on there. Once you've done playing FFXI on your XP partition, unmount it and it's an encrypted file which nothing can read unless that hacked malware can break AES 256 encryption.

Also to further enhance the safety, you can generate a a symmetric or public keys for the passphrase, basically you can store this key in a UBS stick so unless you use the stick, you can't possibly open the encrypted drive.

You'll need to read up on this for the generated keys:

http://www.gnupg.org/

So this should prevent 99.99% of hackings, provided that you don't surf with XP and take care while surfing on VISTA.

It's a bit of a pain to switch from XP->VISTA to surf but hey, this is better than owning 2 computers. Plus the extra encryption is icing on the cake.

[Starr]

Might be better posted in Technical help, this is too technical for me!

[Phraust]

Marcus? Or shall I say m1k3y??!

[Redness]

Or just play on a console. I understand what you're saying though, but I personally hate Vista with a burning fiery passion. :D

[Tricen]

If SE were smurt, and they wanted to ban botters easily, they could just wait randomly pop a target under DA's floor so you can't normally target it, and make it the same ID as Fafnir/Nidhogg and b& anyone who casts on it.

[Spekkio]

mount it once with malware on your system and you're toast. most malwares will intercept your keystrokes being sent out or read the saved password file on your disk. if it's the former, encrypting your drive would do a lot of nothing. if it's the latter, it only protects you until you play again. malware does not need continuous access to the file, only a very tiny chunk of time, so you wouldn't really be preventing anything unless you got infected while not playing, you realized you were compromised, and you didn't decrypt the partition or play ffxi until you'd formatted your system and destroyed the malware.

[tymora]

Can't have 2 mobs with same ID - Makes no sense.

But can make Fafnir pop underground first and see who the botters are before "warping" fafnir to the surface.

[Hanyoko]

Not from underground. It has to swoop down from the.... solid cave ceiling... and snatch a taru!

Back on topic though. The best security would be a clean Ghost loaded each time before playing. Updates would be a pain as you would have to re-ghost each time.

[zantes]

Myself, I use 2 separate computers. 1 for FFXI and one for everything else. This gives me the same effect as you suggest but FFXI is physically separated from everything else. Gotta love KVM switches.

[Zragnarok]

Myself, I use 2 separate computers. 1 for FFXI and one for everything else. This gives me the same effect as you suggest but FFXI is physically separated from everything else. Gotta love KVM switches.

It's what I do as well but not everyone has the luxury to do that :/

[Questionable]

From my understanding, most keyloggers/malware have to run off a process which means it's not acting like a typical virus. Basically they are trojans in some ways which require the operating system to run. So if you did a Vista based FFXI trojan/keylogger, when you run XP, how could that port over anyhow? Different OS/Different systems.

[Questionable]

Anyways, why would you browse such sites anyways that contains these malware, if anything you can even surf with a virtual machine within Vista for FFXI stuff, and keep different passwords DIFFERENT (aka bg password NOT same as POL)... I know some people are lazy or can't remember many passwords, and I hate myself remembering passwords, but you can just put a hard password and leave it on a UBS stick safely and read it when you re-install FFXI.

Also don't forget about the weak passwords which can be broken by brute force, which then playing on PS2 wouldn't help you.

[Tricen]

Can't have 2 mobs with same ID - Makes no sense.

But can make Fafnir pop underground first and see who the botters are before "warping" fafnir to the surface.

I meant have the thing pop instead of faf, and have faf pop at a later window.

[sleekmotorwurkz]

Can't have 2 mobs with same ID - Makes no sense.

But can make Fafnir pop underground first and see who the botters are before "warping" fafnir to the surface.

I have been saying that for the past 3 years. Only problem (Im not sure exactly how it works), but if a bot was able to target it underground wouldnt spamming Flash (you must select a valid target) be able to target it also?

I meant have the thing pop instead of faf, and have faf pop at a later window.

And that wouldnt work, because when youre spamming you dont care what it is that popped, if all darters are dead and something pops, its gonna get claimed, bot or no.

[Therin]

If SE were smurt, and they wanted to ban botters easily, they could just wait randomly pop a target under DA's floor so you can't normally target it, and make it the same ID as Fafnir/Nidhogg and b& anyone who casts on it.

I'd giggle a lot. :D

[arshesney]

I meant have the thing pop instead of faf, and have faf pop at a later window.

Can't GMs pop in zone with any ID they like? I vaguely remember reading something about that in a thread.

From my understanding, most keyloggers/malware have to run off a process which means it's not acting like a typical virus. Basically they are trojans in some ways which require the operating system to run. So if you did a Vista based FFXI trojan/keylogger, when you run XP, how could that port over anyhow? Different OS/Different systems.

Take it to the next level and install Linux as your "browsing" OS.
I have a linux box for surfing/torrent/storage and a vista64 box for playing, never had virus issues (knock on wood).

[Questionable]

Anyways, it depends what your surf, and what safety net you have. Just having a VM (virtual machine) with Linux is pretty safe to surf whatever. It's contained inside that environment so it'll never "get out" so to speak unless you share folders. Correct me if I'm wrong about VM

[Hanyoko]

My idea was to make (lets say Faf) have 10 IDs in the dat. Every window 10 pop packets are sent, 9 of them are fakes (random). If its real pop time 1 of them is real, otherwise its also a fake. If a fake is claimed Hi2U GM.

Would stop botting pretty fast.

[Demosthenes]

I use Archlinux and mostly play ffxi on the ps2, but I feel rather safe playing on the pc. I don't use windows for anything but playing ffxi.

[orinthia]

Don't really even need windows to play ffxi anymore.

http://www.wineffxi.org/

gentoo, OpenSUSE, and Ubuntu have some install instructions there. Check it out if you want to try just not having windows all together for the game. I'd imagine it'd be a lot safer then heh.