Recent Hackings and Steps to Ensure Account Safety.

[TeancumMemsochet]

Keyloggers record every stroke you make on your keyboard. The copy/paste method surpasses that.

OK, I'm going to call bunk on that. I used a keylogger once to get my mom's AOL password back when I was a kid. And the one I used was a commercial piece of software, that I got on a free trial. It not only recorded the keystrokes, but the window titles, and if I had paid for it everything copied into the clipboard. That was almost 10 years ago, I'm sure that if I wanted to I could find a decent keylogger that would track every user input on my computer. Hell, with a little bit of work and research, I'm sure I could write one. So, don't fool yourself into thinking that it is safe to do.

As for keeping your password stored anywhere, it is not safe. Common password policy is that you use passwords you can remember, but are at least complicated enough to confuse dictionary and common password attacks(ie can't be found in any dictionary, word list, or common password list). NEVER write down your passwords or store them on your harddrive. Part of my job is to write software that is specifically designed scan large collection of files for specific information. Not only that, but to do it efficiently as possible. It really wouldn't be difficult to scan all files, especially those that aren't OS and common program related files. Hell, I can even include the ability to look in any MS Office type files and read in the data from those files. Even password protected Access databases aren't that difficult to crack. And this is all from my VERY limited experience.

The only safe way to protect yourself is do what EVERY computer tech has been preaching since at least WinXP SP1 came out. Get a hardware firewall, anti virus, ad ware remover and don't Download anything you don't know what it is. Then make sure to keep everything updated regularly. If you think there's something on your PC and you don't know what it is, DO NOT JUST DELETE IT. Either do the research and make sure you know how to safely remove it, or have a trained PC tech do it for you.

[Zero Serenity]

Enough. I'm speaking on deaf ears it seems.

[Seditedi]

Btw, what software firewalls do you guys use/prefer? Looking for a better alternative to what I'm currently using (Zonealarm free lol).

[Zosi]

1) Userland is not a word. IE does not use an API to the kernel (NTLDLR) because, well, it can't. It does however use a bunch of already windows embedded functions resulting in extra throughput, which is what matters to me.

Ashira already mentioned "Userland". "NTLDLR" is nonsense. NTLDR is the Windows NT bootloader, which is very certainly NOT the OS kernel and has nothing to do with user apps. "windows embedded functions" don't result in extra thoroughput, they result in faster "startup" time, which is in quotes because IE never HAS to start up, because it's core DLLs are loaded as part of Explorer. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, and you're only making yourself look like an idiot by posting shit like this.

2) Not the fault of those who make IE. Besides, have you ever heard of an IE exploit since the JPEG buffer overflow? I can name a number of exploits that still exsist with Gekko and Mozilla as a whole.

MS plays a little game with IE exploits, due to point 1 above. Exploits to shared parts of IE (which include the rendering engine, the Javascript engine, and pretty much everything except the actual IE UI window) are fixed by "Windows" security updates instead of IE. Thus, IE never has any holes, but the shared components that make it up do.

Also, the fact that someone hasn't heard of exploits has very little to do with their existance. MS says very little about exploits, whereas Firefox makes a pretty big deal and frequently releases a completely new release IMMEDIATELY (not once a month like MS patches usually are) to fix any small hole that gets found. Does that mean Firefox is less secure, since you hear about the exploits when they happen rather than when MS feels like fixing them? No.

3) OSS is also more easily exploitable than close source IN GENERAL because the code is readiliy available. It's just the willingness of people to actualy exploit the code.

And this is where you go totally off the deep end. With open source software, you know what you're getting, and you're free to audit it yourself and report problems. *Many* large corporations do this, and as a result a lot of security problems are found and fixed. With closed-source software, you have to trust the vendor, which is exactly what it sounds like, an unknown.

There's no "willingness" problem, because open-source software runs a substantial portion of the internet, including a lot of very high-profile sites that hackers would love to break wide open. There's just as much (if not more) desire to find security holes in open-source products as closed-source.

In short, pretty much every part of your post is complete bullshit. You're not "speaking to deaf ears", you're spewing ignorant bullshit to people who know better, and calling them idiots for recognizing how wrong you are.

[TeancumMemsochet]

Oh, I would also like to ask:

Zero, do you work for Microsoft? I never have seen anybody defend Macroshit's software so profoundly before and not work for them.

Also, I think you are pulling stuff out of your ass. While IE hasn't been embedded into the kernel of windows, it is embedded into the GUI of Windows. It's been that way since Win95. Or did you forget about all the stink that Netscape caused b/c you couldn't uninstall IE from windows due to it's level of embedding? And since unlike *nix, you have to use the GUI, it's safe to say that IE is embedded into Windows.

[rydiu]

I use this for a firewall..

http://wipfw.sourceforge.net/

It's the BSD standard firewall ported to windows...I don't use it because I am paranoid, I use it to get around comcast's shitty traffic shaping program. My router handles all my firewall needs, but if you don't have one, WIPFW is good shit as BSD pretty much invented the internet (TCP,BIND hello)

If you use torrents and have comcast, here's instructions on how to evade Sandvine and boost your uplink speed using WIPFW (sandvine is the software they use to send bad packets down our torrent tubes and fuck us over)

http://wakarimasu.googlepages.com/windows

it says 2000/XP but it works for vista, too

[Byrd]

Side note for people not as computer literate as most of the people in this thread (such as myself):

When you do a search in windows it automatically saves your search to the registry in "search assistant". For example search for "Tajstoleurpassword.exe" and voila it's going to appear in your registry under a weird looking heading. Just so we don't get a bunch of false alarms here.

I thought I had the keylogger and started panicking a bit, I was informed by a more computer literate LS mate of the above condition.

All that being said, I'm resetting my password and downloading most of the programs suggested in the OP, so it's a good thing.

[Tempyst]

In short, pretty much every part of your post is complete bullshit. You're not "speaking to deaf ears", you're spewing ignorant bullshit to people who know better, and calling them idiots for recognizing how wrong you are.

I've found it effective to just automatically skip over any post with an anime-planet.com signature

[Minions]

Side note for people not as computer literate as most of the people in this thread (such as myself):

When you do a search in windows it automatically saves your search to the registry in "search assistant". For example search for "Tajstoleurpassword.exe" and voila it's going to appear in your registry under a weird looking heading. Just so we don't get a bunch of false alarms here.

I thought I had the keylogger and started panicking a bit, I was informed by a more computer literate LS mate of the above condition.

All that being said, I'm resetting my password and downloading most of the programs suggested in the OP, so it's a good thing.

This right here makes the op made of fail.... you told people to search for the files first, then clean the registry.... which made the registry appear. l o l

[Pacha]

I just did a full scan with Trend Micro and it didn't detect any threats whatsoever. Has this virus been able to get past *Trend Micro? Also, is there any evidence that this virus could keylog stuff besides your ffxi account? I don't know a whole lot about this stuff ; ;.

*Edit: Manual search did not turn up anything either so my computer appears to be secure despite visiting ffxiah yesterday.

[rydiu]

In short, pretty much every part of your post is complete bullshit. You're not "speaking to deaf ears", you're spewing ignorant bullshit to people who know better, and calling them idiots for recognizing how wrong you are.

I've found it effective to just automatically skip over any post with an anime-planet.com signature

I bet you took Ryko's idiotic bullshit to heart, too...

[Tempyst]

In short, pretty much every part of your post is complete bullshit. You're not "speaking to deaf ears", you're spewing ignorant bullshit to people who know better, and calling them idiots for recognizing how wrong you are.

I've found it effective to just automatically skip over any post with an anime-planet.com signature

I bet you took Ryko's idiotic bullshit to heart, too...

No you're just a chronically terrible poster

[rydiu]

Gee, thanks for the criticism Anonymous.

[Naramaska]

Zero, do you work for Microsoft?

Our LS leader works for them and isn't even that rabbid

[Ashira]

I just did a full scan with Trend Micro and it didn't detect any threats whatsoever. Has this virus been able to get past trend micro? Also, is there any evidence that this virus could keylog stuff besides your ffxi account? I don't know a whole lot about this stuff ; ;.

The OP said his computer used Trend Micro and it never picked it up.

[Airenn]

I just did a full scan with Trend Micro and it didn't detect any threats whatsoever. Has this virus been able to get past trend micro? Also, is there any evidence that this virus could keylog stuff besides your ffxi account? I don't know a whole lot about this stuff ; ;.

The OP said his computer used Trend Micro and it never picked it up.

Err no? Not me anyway, I don't have Trend Micro. And to Minions, ohwell. lol. I do a manual search before I search registry. Mostly cause I know what to look for/that it's going to show up.

[nithyan]

This thread is becoming disturbingly slashdot-ish.

Enough. I'm speaking on deaf ears it seems.

We've even got a SCREW YOU GUYS IM GOING HOME post.

[Seditedi]

If you aren't happy with your current anti virus software, definitely look into AVG free edition.
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download.../frt/0?prd=aff
Pretty nice program, won't bog down your system with bells and whistles, nice clean interface, and self-updating; new virus definitions nearly every day.

[Byrd]

I do a manual search before I search registry. Mostly cause I know what to look for/that it's going to show up.

You might consider editing the OP to reflect that it will show up in the search assistant of the registry. It may save more luddites like myself a few gray hairs. All that being said, thank you for the post.

[Airenn]

I do a manual search before I search registry. Mostly cause I know what to look for/that it's going to show up.

You might consider editing the OP to reflect that it will show up in the search assistant of the registry. It may save more luddites like myself a few gray hairs. All that being said, thank you for the post.

NP, I appreciate posts like yours helping to better the intent of the OP -- It's stuff like this that I was really looking for. All the negativity is not needed. Even Taj was less of a dick than most so far in his post and it served to help. I will edit it to do so. Thanks.^^<3