COMPUTER SYSTEM SECURITY

This will hopefully give you some useful information concerning firewall and related issues for Windows 98SE from my own experiences over the past four years. As it says here, Windows is "the biggest beta test in history".

My main protection on the Internet comes from Zone Alarm software firewall from Zone Labs at http://www.zonelabs.com ($49.95). Its main purpose is to secure the vast majority of the 65000 ports available on the computer from undesired activity. Without something like it, any internet request is immediately granted by your machine. A firewall (software or hardware) is without a doubt the single most important product. Hardware firewalls tend to be more expensive but provide stronger protection. A recent survey showed that the typical time an un-firewalled machine takes to get taken over by an automated virus-bot or something similar is a mere ten minutes. I cannot stress enough that every second your firewall is completely down is critical. Being hacked by someone targetting you or your business personally is only one facet of the problem. A growing issue is that of "botnets", large numbers of computers hacked to gain control of them for temporary use of its bandwidth and internet address. A black market has sprung up which sells activation keys to malware inserted into large numbers of compromised machines for the purpose of spam or DDOS attacks. The scope of the problem is mentioned here. A recent Deloitte poll of financial institutions in 2004 showed no less than 83% of respondents had their systems compromised in the past year. So, be very, very careful of your online financial transactions, too. Identity theft and related issues are talked about here.

The second goal, that of controlling which programs are accessing the internet, is also met by Zone Alarm and by any good firewall whether hardware or software.

Once the perimeter is nominally secured, there is the issue of what is allowed to enter via normal channels. Such traffic can still be harmful depending on how your machine is configured. In my case, unless I am interfacing with a known, trusted website, I use AdSubtract from Intermute at http://www.intermute.com/adsubtract/ ($29.95). With it I can selectively allow or block advertisements, animations, auto-refresh, pop-up windows, background images, background music, cookies, referrers, Java applets, and Javascript for any specified domain. It also allows you to selectively remove cookies, and empty your temporary internet files from Internet Explorer and your browse history. I have learned to configure my browser to allow everything and let AdSubtract do the filtering.

With these, 99% of problems will be eliminated up front.

There are still times when some bit of spam gets through, some kind of tracking software. You need some way to seek and destroy these hidden spies on your computer. My favorite is Ad Aware Plus by Lavasoft at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ ($26.95). This will scan for known spyware. I purchased one of their other products to also get RegHance because I occassionally clean my system registry. Another favorite is Spybot at http://www.safer-networking.org/. It can be used for free and will check your system for known 'bots and trojans sent by spammers and advertising trolls. I find something with this every few months, usually because I had to lower my firewall somewhat to try and connect with some site.

My original problem, that of a computer virus, probably never would have come up if I had all the protections then that I have now. Still, the first product I purchased was PC-cillin by Trend Micro at http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/pc-cillin/evaluate/overview.htm ($29.95 two years ago). I set it to update weekly and scan my system. New files can be immediately checked by a new PC-cillin anti-virus tab in the file properties dialogue box. There are other excellent antivirus programs out there.

Beyond this is the issue of system stability and monitoring. Granted, this is Windows 98 we're talking about. I'm assuming you're using 98SE (second edition) as it is purported to be much more stable and better all around. The general problem with it, as you've discovered, is it doesn't tell you much about what's going on. Additionally, unlike most other operating systems, it will gradually gum itself to death because the system neglects to properly clean up after itself. This is demonstrated by its unfortunate tendency to crash on a daily basis, and worse, eventually require a complete system re-installation. For the latter case, at least, it is possible to stave off the inevitable. A hard drive defragmenter is necessary for Windows, again unlike other (I'm sorry to say) much better written operating systems. This should be run several times a year. I believe the system may come with one (at least I *think* mine is from the Win98SE system). There are others out there.

The system registry is a delicate thing. Absolutely everything gets put into (I think) two files which together comprise it. It is written into and read from constantly, and if it ever breaks, your computer won't even boot-up. I've heard one should back it up but I don't even know where the files are. Fortunately, the system itself backs it up internally so it's rarely lost. Mostly what endangers it is getting gummed-up with extraneous garbage which, as often as not, no longer ever resides in your system. Everything you've ever installed is in there forever. Some programs exacerbate the problem by making excessive numbers of entries. Creative Technologies' Sound Blaster card software, for example, makes something like 8000 entries alone. ACDSee, a picture browser which is quite good, makes over a thousand. Typically the registry is very roughly on the order of a couple megabytes in size in a fairly clean one. I recently removed over ten megabytes of junk that was easily located because I knew it no longer resided anywhere on my computer (except, of course, the remember-everything-forever system registry). Long-term system health is greatly aided by being able to take out the garbage occassionally. I love the freeware program RegCleaner. It can be obtained from thousands of places, but try and find a source you can reasonably trust so as not to provide yet another path for a trojan or virus to infect your machine. RegCleaner sorts through your system files and provides lists of things you can easily identify and choose to throw away with a couple mouse clicks. The organization tabs for the various lists are: Installed Software, Startup List, Uninstall Menu, File Types, New Files, Shell Extensions, and Backups. Of these, the first two are of the most use. The first tells you what you've currently got installed, and the second tells you what software is run automatically when you first reboot your computer (Very useful from a security perspective. I sometimes find things here that don't trigger my other programs.)

Computer backups are absolutely vital. They can reduce a re-installation to a few hours for a system which may have taken months for you to install and get working the way you like it. Tape back-ups are good. I, personally, couldn't afford the extra so I used my CD burner. I've tried several packages: EasyCD Creator 5, Drive Image by PowerQuest, but the only one which successfully re-installed my system partition was NTI Backup Now! by New Tech Infosystems. I don't attempt do file-level backups. My data files are easily burned onto CD with Nero Burning Rom, possibly the best CD burning package available. I do a full partition-level backup of C:, the Windows system partition. I was able to recover three times in this manner over the last few (unusually computer-eventful months).

After backing up the system partition, the issue of the self-destroying qualities of Windows 98SE needed to be further addressed. I could stave off self-destruction and back things up, but I recently implemented a further step. (The newer forms Windows are putting everything into one gigantic heap, which is great for Microsoft but useless for anyone who needs to repair their system from outside it.) All programs I install now I attempt to install into another partition entirely. Generally, the only partition which is trashed is the C: partition. I have set aside another partition for nothing except installed programs. After a system (C: partition) reinstall, those programs are usually still accessible to the system without having to reinstall them. Usually, I only have to repair a broken shortcut or association to get the program going again. If you back-up frequently, you won't even have to do that. I have a the system on C:, most of my installed programs on D:, my temporary and scratch-pad files and directories on E:, my actively changing but valuable data files on F:, and all other data files in other partitions yet. In fact, I created at least ten partitions which just happen to be 650MB each--a convenient size for backing-up onto CDs. Backups are so vital they must be reasonably convenient to do, so by integrating them in this manner, good management of my data is greatly improved. The data is not splattered over my C: partition, vulnerable to the stray system crash, plus it is protected from the messy scratch-pad and temporary files.

To clean up the system partition itself, my choice is AShampoo WinOptimizer Suite at http://www.ashampoo.com/. It contains sub-programs to clean up your drive, registry, internet, and DLL files, as well as an internet tuner. This combined with RegCleaner have extended the life of my system between re-installs. Of course, with proper backup, I don't need to reinstall things from scratch. This is a huge improvement.

To get started and get some instant gratification, I recommend Spybot. I am certain you will be amazed. Then, perhaps, RegCleaner. Both are easy to install and use and the results are dramatic.

If you want to read more, this article will give you a sense how well Microsoft is getting the concept of security in 2004. This one talks about the increased problems businesses will see. This one recommends not using Internet Explorer. This one suggests that people get with the program if they value their network.

I hope this helps you secure it better. Good luck!