Dan Appleman - On a security crusade
- Posted: Aug 12, 2004 at 2:56 PM
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Dan Appleman is on a campaign to secure every computer in the country. To help in that goal he wrote a book:
Always Use Protection: A Teen's Guide to Safe Computing.
But that's not why we put him here on Channel 9 (he's the first non-Microsoft employee to be interviewed for Channel 9, by the way). He's here because we saw him speak at a local bookstore and realized that he has more knowledge about real-world security (and the lack thereof) than anyone else we've met and we wanted to share him with you.
Do you think you know something about security?
His experience shows that teenagers generally don't know enough to protect their systems.
Over the next week you'll see more from Dan. It's all part of our push to get people to spend a few minutes making their machines more secure. Another important way? Get the just-released Windows XP Service Pack 2.
What's the official way to get that? Visit microsoft.com/protect and turn on automatic updating.
We put up two videos today from Dan. The second one asks him "what are some security tips?"
By the way, Dan Appleman has been a long-time developer and wrote the best selling and technically acclaimed Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Windows API. He's also the cofounder of Apress book publishing company.
By the way, regarding Windows XP Service Pack 2, Todd Bishop, journalist with the Seattle Post Intelligencer, is pointing to "early results." We'd love to know what your experiences with XPSP2 have been. Post them here!
But that's not why we put him here on Channel 9 (he's the first non-Microsoft employee to be interviewed for Channel 9, by the way). He's here because we saw him speak at a local bookstore and realized that he has more knowledge about real-world security (and the lack thereof) than anyone else we've met and we wanted to share him with you.
Do you think you know something about security?
His experience shows that teenagers generally don't know enough to protect their systems.
Over the next week you'll see more from Dan. It's all part of our push to get people to spend a few minutes making their machines more secure. Another important way? Get the just-released Windows XP Service Pack 2.
What's the official way to get that? Visit microsoft.com/protect and turn on automatic updating.
We put up two videos today from Dan. The second one asks him "what are some security tips?"
By the way, Dan Appleman has been a long-time developer and wrote the best selling and technically acclaimed Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Windows API. He's also the cofounder of Apress book publishing company.
By the way, regarding Windows XP Service Pack 2, Todd Bishop, journalist with the Seattle Post Intelligencer, is pointing to "early results." We'd love to know what your experiences with XPSP2 have been. Post them here!
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I was on the phone to a freind this evening who was having computer problems. He had installed a version of MessengerPlus that had been sent to him over MSN. It seems to have installed a load of malware junk at the same time and stopped his AOL from working.
I found it really difficult to advise what to do.
His laptop is running XP home so I suggested system restore first, but he didn't have any restore points available.
I went on to suggest he get rid of unwanted startup programs using msconfig and then uninstall and reinstall AOL but that didn't seem to help either.
Something else must have been wrong as well as he was getting an error message about "rundll bridge" at startup and media player was reporting no sound device was present. When I suggested he look in device manager he said it was completely empty and did not display a device tree at all.
While I have a fairly good idea of the processes present on a standard XP installation, It's difficult to know which startup programs are OEM included with the computer and which are potentially harmful.
As a last resort I suggested he tried his recovery CDs but he doesn't know what he did with them.
In the end all I could suggest was he called his OEM (Toshiba) support for more advice.
It's really difficult to provide support over the phone when you cannot see what is going on on thier computer, makes me realise how difficult it must be for tech support professionals.
I'd like to suggest he get SP2, but not until he has at least a fully functioning system again, also being on dialup I doubt he has the patience to wait for it to download via BITS.
Perhaps I'll burn the network install to a CD and send him that instead.
Your are definately right! I go to High School and not one kid I know, that has their own Laptop/PC knows about security and how it works. And if you count Parents/Teachers well... Lets just say, nearly 99.9%, don't have a clue about security...
Anyway can't agree more with Dan's advice, my cousin (all most a teenager) had aload of ad-ware on his PC, every since then I now Remote Support his PC once a week and ensure that his AV, Ad-ware utils are up to date, and I run a complete virus scan.
I got him a ADSL Router and enabled it's integrated firewall. I'm going to put SP2 this week any way, just because I think the pop-up blocker implementation rocks!
I have also made sure that his account is non-admin.
Does anyone know of a good method of blocking url's?
The link for XP2 doesn't seem to work...?
All good stuff!
1.) Add your account to the Users or Power Users group. Remove it from the Administrator group.
2.) Install all of the latest updates. Heck, I got the SP2 beta just to make sure I was ahead of script kiddes!
3.) Have a virus scanner.
4.) And always have Windows Firewall activated.
Oh, and never install software where you do not trust the source or vendor. That includes stuff your friends send you through MSN Messenger.
Also keep the hell away from warez, and any kind of illegal software. They will screw you. Guranteed.
If someone is a hit with a virus / hack, and they are a Windows users, Microsoft is to blame. No, not really, but that's the perception. After all, "their friend with a Mac doesn't have this problem" (yet..). Or their friendly geek down the street / hall / whatever would recommend a different OS, since that OS is "secure by default" (whatever that means). Don't get me wrong, every OS has security flaws, but the perception by joe user out there is that if they use an Apple, they won't have this problem. (Safety in lack-of-numbers?)
Additionally, I think Microsoft *REALLY* needs to push people as best they can to upgrade to XP. I know lots of people still running older os's. Heck, I know a .NET developer ( a good one, mind you!) who only runs Windows 95 at home.. Honest.. (I was floored, but they only code at work). XP SP 2 won't do diddly if tons of people don't use XP, yet are still vulnerable.
What are your thoughts?
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