• KJ
• Aug 20,2007
• In: Blog, Technology, Thesis Reports

Safety of a Computer

As technology becomes cheaper and more widespread, the threats to one’s computer increase. Crackers (hackers who want to cause harm or steal information), viruses (code designed to modify how a program works), and trojans (a sort of virus that opens up the computer to an outside attack) are becoming more abundant, and an ever increasing threat to both someone’s computer and their personal information. But are they the only problem a user has to protect their computer from? Despite their malicious intentions, they rarely affect a computer in the way a normal user would. People who do not fully understand how their computer works, or how to properly handle it may be more of a threat than anything else. The user can be far more of a threat to their own computers due to their lack of attentiveness, security, and patience.

The world can be a scary place, and many people only think about themselves. These people will find any way to take advantage of the poor, confused citizens of this planet. They will do this by any means, such as devious look-alike tricks, forcibly breaking-an-entry, and the ‘fear’ through threat messages. All of these play highly on the end user, who, in most cases, just has to pay attention just to realize they are endangering themselves [1]. However, the user needs to pay attention to all things about their computer and how they use it, including what they put on it, and what it is using to do its job.

Though outside forces can be a large problem to someone’s computer, the hardware and software can be just as bad. If someone gets a poorly built computer, or builds one themselves, they may have many computer crashes. Many lead to the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death,” or in other cases result in the computer not even being able to boot. Other issues, such as major slowdowns or random restarts can occur because of software/hardware incompatibilities. But these are not the only problems; poorly programmed software can cause major issues, such as: information corruption, memory leaks (programming errors that continually use up computer memory), and the damaging of other programs.
Of course someone can not just browse the Internet, blindly clicking on any link they see. They would make themselves an easy target, and could quickly become a crackers favorite fool. Unfortunately, that is exactly what a lot of people do. What makes that even worse is that they do not use any sort of protection when doing it! The best way to avoid any trouble, on the user’s part, is just to pay attention to what they are clicking [1]. However, in many cases this is not a priority to the user, and can lead to some disastrous situations for their computer.
Most people use to Internet Explorer [2], mostly because it is freely distributed with Windows. However, unannounced to them, Internet Explorer is one of the buggiest browsers out there [3]. Despite being told tons of times, people never truly understand until their computers are full of viruses. There are ways, however, to plug these problems up.
The first and simplest is to just switch to Mozilla Firefox, or the Opera browsers. Both have their own issues, but issues that are rarely exploited, and patched quickly by their respective staff. They also fix a lot of graphical issues that appear in Internet Explorer, like any Cascade Style Sheet issues (Web 2.0 website styling) and support a variety of features Internet Explorer doesn’t have [4].
A lot of problems in IE (Internet Explorer) can be fixed simply by turning off ActiveX controls, which is a special scripting language designed by Microsoft that allows access to specific functions within Windows. This presents a large problem to the user, as with it enabled will allow remote access to their computer through a website using ActiveX [5] . Also, there is plug-ins available to the user which can fix many issues, and protect their computer from spam and pop ups, most of which they will get from wandering into a site without some sort of pop up blocker.
A major problem today on the Internet is “Phishing.” It pretty much is exactly how it sounds. Consider it just like fishing; someone wants to catch a fish for food (or money), throws out a line with bait, and just waits for the fish to come to it. Thing is, the fish does not have to go to the bait, but is generally tricked into doing so. This is where the attentiveness comes in. It’s exceedingly obvious when dealing with the bait. Many times, just paying attention to the domain name of the place you’re at is all that’s needed to be done [1]. An example would be a MySpace Phishing attempt, where someone sends a link saying, “Check out my new MySpace!” If you click the link, it leads to a page such as “http://login.my51.com” which has a duplicated MySpace login screen prompting for your username and password. This is just one scenario, but it is pretty much the same all around.
A Phisher only does this for one reason, money. In one way or another, they’ll make money off the account. Most accounts that get ‘phished’ become spam accounts, and will place ads in all of their friends’ accounts. What do ads do? Bring in money. There is plug-ins for IE and Firefox that quickly detect if the site the user is at is a known Phishing site, and warn them before going in. But the most effective method to avoid being phished: pay attention!
Another big problem of the user and their attentiveness is ‘idle’ threats. These are the threats that mean absolutely nothing. Generally, when one signs up for some place, they will start receiving an occasional E-Mail that states some of the site’s new features or big releases. Here’s where the threats come in. Someone wants your account information, and sends you an E-Mail saying something is wrong with your account and that they need your username and password to fix it. There are three problems with that. No site manager ever needs someone’s username and password, they have it already; secondly, just about all site managers give the warning at some point or another telling anyone who receives something like that not to answer it because they will never ask for it; thirdly, as in most cases, the sender does not even have an address pertaining to the site. This has been an effective method though, because many of the threats play on the fear that if the user doesn’t cooperate, they’ll lose their account [1].
One last Internet thing is obvious links and files. Links that describe themselves as a threat to your computer are most likely going to be a threat to your computer. Also, downloads with filenames that sound suspicious are probably bad [1]. Pay attention when installing files; if ever Windows brings up a dialog warning the user that important files are being overwritten, then the program is a very potential threat to the user’s computer and should be researched before finishing the installation.
Though the user’s attentiveness plays a big part in the safety of the computer, it never hurts to have a little backup. Many computer users lack the necessary security needed to protect their computer from the many threats posed to it. There are a variety of programs, many expensive, others free, which can secure the computer from outside, and inside, attacks. Ranging from Virus scanners to Trojan scanners, many of these programs are a necessity in order to keep your computer running at its peak performance.
Virus scanners are programs that scan the computer’s files for signatures related to known viruses [6]. There are several virus scanners on the net; many are free, and others are not. The free programs, however tricky this may be, are generally the best to get. Most are dedicated directly to virus scanning, and include no other programs. They also focus a lot of time in to optimizing the program’s scanning methods, in order to use less computer resources and to complete the scan more quickly.
Spyware scanners are programs that search the computer for Spyware. Spyware are programs that scan your computer for personal information, and report said information back to an external source. A scanner, which is regularly updated to included new Spyware issues, scans the computer for any trace of these programs. If one is found, it generally removes the program. Spyware can be the cause of many computer lag issues, including random (but not permanent) lockups, and various other slowdowns [7]. It is generally a good idea for any computer user to get a program dedicated to Spyware, and there are several free ones on the Internet including: Spybot: Search and Destroy, and Microsoft’s Windows Defender.
A major computer necessity is a firewall. A firewall is a program that monitors your network activity (any Internet stuffs). It scans incoming and outgoing packets (small files that store information) for any malicious data [8]. If anything malicious is detected it is blocked from the computer. This is a must have for a computer if you plan to browse the Internet. However, people rarely have to go out and find one, as most routers have a built in firewall for the user’s protection. Firewalls can have a couple of downsides though, the most common being that they can block friendly packets too. If that occurs, many programs will fail to run appropriately because they can not contact their server (games take a hit for this often). There are ways around that, such as allowing the programs, or opening the ports the program needs to use.
Other issues can arise within a computer that can come from hasty actions on the part of the user. Patience is a virtue when working with a computer, and sometimes the patience goes a long way. Many times the urge of the user to finish something might cause issues, including duplications, corruption, or even deletion of needed information.
A couple of these issues can occur online. After filling out a form, the user generally has to send the information. When sent, the server takes time to handle the information as it sees fit. This can take a couple of seconds or up to even a minute in some bad cases. If the user gets impatient, and reloads the page, they could end up resending the information causing an unnecessary duplication of information. In many cases this is not bad, and just ends in a post or IM being duplicated. But there are cases where doing this could cause the duplication of important information or even the possibility of the corruption of the information.
Other issues can arise when running an online script. If this script needs to execute a lot of sensitive information and is reloaded during its run, it may possibly fail to finish, or refuse to run correctly again. Also, scripts that depend heavily on the server that are rerun can cause brief Denial of Service attacks, though this may take several hundred people for even a simple one. A D.o.S. attack, as it’s called, is when a computer gets caught in a sort of loop that slows down the usage of other programs and affects the network activity of the users [9].
Installations can require time to finish. Most installers now-and-days after a failed or canceled installation will remove the files they installed before they shutdown, but older installers may not. If these programs require the modification of system files, an unfinished installation may inadvertently damage the computer and cause issues. Or, in the best-case scenario, the program just will not run.
Other issues can arise if the program being run requires serious amounts of processing power. This can slow down the computer and/or cause lockups. While this program is running though, it is best not to shut it down or do anything to interfere with it. However, because of the slowdown, the user may become impatient and try to forcefully shut the program down. If the program is ended without finishing its objective, it might affect the system negatively including the corruption of system files, or lead to the system crashing because an important program was ended.
The great interweb can be a mysterious and awesome place, but without some form of caution on the part of the user many bad things can occur. Obviously there are many threats to someone’s computer, both internally and externally. However, with a little bit of awareness on the part of the user most external problems can be avoided, some patience can aid in a safer online environment, and some security can defend the computer from all internal and external threats.