Avoid Windows Malware: Bank on a Live CD

Washington Post ^ | October 12, 2009; 2:00 PM ET | Brian Krebs

[altair]

An investigative series I've been writing about organized cyber crime gangs stealing millions of dollars from small to mid-sized businesses has generated more than a few responses from business owners who were concerned about how best to protect themselves from this type of fraud.

[altair]

Ladies and Gentlemen, now for tonight's weather. In Hell we will be experiencing lows down 28 degrees ...

I never ever thought I'd see a sensible article from the Washington Post. Never.

[altair]

Of course, a Mac computer would probably work just as well, but the focus here is on Windows users who may be looking for a cheap way to harden their existing setup to avoid malicious software.

[TheDailyChange]

Do youself a favor and stay on XP as long as you can.

[gura]

Do yourself a favor and download Ubuntu.

[gura]

Do yourself a favor and download Ubuntu.

[altair]

What is this XP you speak of? I use Linux, Solaris and Mac at work and Mac at home.

[altair]

Do yourself a favor and download Ubuntu.

I'm gun shy due to previous bad experiences with APT and when I worked for a Linux distro maker it was an RPM based distro.

I would take Ubuntu on a preinstall ...

[RayChuang88]

One thing I do NOT like about Windows XP is that the OS is NOT graceful when recovering from a program crash. Despite what people think, Windows Vista does a far better job in case any program crashes, and Windows 7 builds on this foundation.

[snowsislander]

The author is correct: using Windows to bank with is a very dangerous action, and one that everyone should avoid.

The LiveCD idea is not a bad idea, and there are a large number of well done ones available.

[SunkenCiv]

Ping!

[ShadowAce]

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Windows also makes a Bootable CD for it’s system. i’ve used it before. i don’t know whether or not it accesses the computer hard drive though.

It’s a bit clumsy to use though.

[stainlessbanner]

Best Live CD http://www.knoppix.org/

[Knitebane]

I'm gun shy due to previous bad experiences with APT and when I worked for a Linux distro maker it was an RPM based distro.

Odd. I switched off of RedHat after the third time that up2date hosed by RPM database.

Here's the basic difference in how the list of what's installed on your system is handled by the dpkg-based distros and the rpm-based distros.

With the dpkg-based distros there is a text file in /var/lib/dpkg/info for every package you install. When you install a new package a new file is added in that directory. The file has a list of what files were installed on your system and other configuration information. So when you query dpkg about what you have installed the utility looks in the directory and then reports back to you.

On rpm-based systems all of this info is kept in a Berkeley v4.x database. If something crashes while rpm or up2date or rhn is accessing that database you can lose the database. At that point you can't tell what packages you've installed or what needs to be updated. Unless you have a good backup of the database you're screwed.