The Symantec Guide To Home Internet Security 139
r3lody writes "There are many households that have high-speed Internet connections, yet most people are simply not doing enough to protect themselves from the many exploits that exist. The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security by Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer was written to speak to those people. Symantec Press is the publisher, yet it remains reasonably vendor-neutral. This book is for non-technical people. Its ten chapters cover a relatively slim 240 pages, so it should not intimidate someone who is not a computer professional. Also, you do not really have to read the book front-to-back, but you can focus in on the chapter or chapters that interest you and have fairly complete information." Read on for the rest of Ray's review.
The first chapter gives the reader a basic overview of the risks of using the Internet without some steps to protect yourself. Fraudsters, those who ply you with get-rich-quick schemes and other spam-delivered scams, are distinguished from hijackers who compromise your machine for local data or to make it part of a “bot farm”. The remaining chapters discuss various aspects of security exposures, how to protect yourself from them, and conclude with a checklist of high points and “Helpful Resources” that contain web sites, phone numbers, and occasional additional side-bars with more in-depth examples.
| The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security | |
| author | Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer |
| pages | 240 |
| publisher | Symantec Press |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | Ray Lodato |
| ISBN | 0321356411 |
| summary | A slim volume packed with valuable information for non-technical Internet users. |
The next chapter is a very informative chapter on preventing identity theft. This part of the book is worthwhile, even if you don’t use the Internet for financial transactions. The authors mention how your personal data can be stolen from company databases, despite precautions you yourself have taken. There are discussions on social engineering and dumpster-diving, as well as phishing scams and keyloggers. The best part of the chapter is the “Recovering from Identify Theft” section. Hopefully you will never need the information there, but it’s very helpful to see it collected in a simple bulleted list. The second side-bar at the end discusses a personal account of a brush with identity theft.
Chapter 3 covers firewalls, which most people think is the only protection they need. It discusses the basics of Internet Protocol (IP), and what firewalls can and can’t do. Lists of both free and commercial firewall products are provided. It wraps up with a few sites that can test your firewall settings to see if you are really protected or not. There were a couple of minor errors (for example, 192.101.432.156 is offered as an IP address, but the third number can’t be more than 255), but most non-technical people need the product lists provided.
The following two chapters cover the various forms of “malware” (viruses, worms, adware, spyware, and Trojans). Conry-Murray and Weafer provide several preventative actions you can take to avoid infection — the most important involves using your common sense (e.g. “Use a firewall” and “Don’t Open Strange E-Mail”) They wrap up by describing how to remove malware via the available anti-spyware programs.
The final category of unwanted Internet debris is spam. The authors state that for most people “spam is an annoyance rather than a plague.” However, they go on to disclose figures that estimate anywhere from 50 to 90% of the 30 billion e-mails sent each day are spam. To explain why spam works, a side-bar talks about Jeremy Jaynes, who was convicted in November 2004 for spamming. He generated about 10,000 credit card sales per month. Two-thirds of those were returned, yet he still netted more that $100,000 a month.
Chapter 7 covers securing Windows XP. At the time of publishing, Microsoft had come out with XP Service Pack 2, with the Windows Security Center. A large section deals with installing SP2 and configuring the Security Center. It’s kept at a level that most users can comprehend and follow, making it another very worthwhile chapter. The following section describes securing Internet Explorer 6 in great detail. The authors do suggest, however, that you might want to use a different browser, such as Firefox or Opera. The thinking is that Firefox and Opera will be more secure because fewer exploits are targeted towards them.
Locking down Windows and IE is not enough to keep your family safe. That’s why they devote the next chapter to “Keeping Your Family Safe Online.” Pitched mostly to parents of younger kids, chapter 8 starts by talking about blocking objectionable content using IE’s Content Adviser. Sexual predators is the next topic, and the authors give the reader good information on how to monitor your children’s online activities, as well as how to report solicitations to the authorities. The final topic revolves around file-sharing software. While they mention the prospect of downloading viruses, the legal ramification of potentially housing illegal downloads is the most important lesson to take away from this section.
Many homes are now using wireless access points. Unfortunately, poor configurations open them up for eavesdroppers and bandwidth hijackers. The simple precautions of changing and hiding the network name (SSID) and changing the password will do a lot, but encryption using WEP, WPA, or WPA2 will help a lot more. They also go into the security issues of public hotspots, including the prospect of “Evil Twins” (user computers that offer a look-alike access point just to steal your personal information).
The book wraps up with a chapter on “Privacy and the Internet.” Anyone who conducts any transactions over the Internet has their personal data stored on a computer that might be accessed online. The key precaution is to not divulge any information you don’t absolutely have to. Data Brokers collect amazing amounts of information on each of us. Three major companies, Acxiom, ChoicePoint and LexisNexis are individually described, with information on how to get reports on what information they’ve recorded, and possibly how to opt-out of having it stored.
Andrew Conry-Murray and Vincent Weafer conclude the book by giving the reader five basic steps to protect themselves online. However, I prefer their final, single simple rule: Use Your Common Sense.
The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security, though a slim book, is packed with a lot of valuable information pitched to the non-technical user. I believe that anyone with a computer connected to the Internet would benefit from reading this book.
You can purchase The Symantec Guide to Home Internet Security from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Oxymoron?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
When they were bought by Symantec, they maintained their quality for a while, but eventually, they just didn't work. Antivirus was really the last utility to fall, but even it finally did. I used to wholeheartedly recommend Norton (and later, Symantec's Norton line) products to anyone who ran Microsoft OSs. Now, my recommendation is unquestionably to uninstall it, download the full removal tool, and run that, too.
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Norton Commander's interface has been copied by almost every file manager.
Disk Editor helped me learn how file systems work (FAT/FAT32, but still);
There were many incredibly useful apps (Norton Disk Doctor), even partititon-encryption (DiskReet) plus a ton of command-line utils.
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Norton 2003 Internet Security was in imo pretty good package. It worked well, didn't grind computer to it's knees etc. 2005 version was almost as good as 2003 but if I remember correctly I had to actually delete one .exe file so that it wouldn't eat all my CPU time. I think that EXE's purpose was to filter email messages but since I don't use rich email clients I didn't need it. I don't know why it ate my CPU though.
Now-a-days I suggest people to install free Avast! AV software and use Windows own firewall
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In short, it's junk.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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Someday, you'll understand, and thank me.
Mac Girls (Score:2)
Regina: Is Blu-Ray a carb?
Cady: YES. [imdb.com]
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Mac computers are not necessarily more secure. They are just less targeted by security exploits because they have a smaller user base. Don't fool yourself. You make a statement like that without backing it up at all. The rest of your comment has absolutely nothing to do with Mac security. Perhaps Mac is better designed with security in mind than Windows is. I really don't know as I've never really used Mac OS X. Linux is certainly better designed for securit
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I'll file that on my bookshelf right between the Jeffery Dahlmer's Table Manners and Sensitivity Training by Hitler.
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The threats on the Internet and the responses available have changed significantly since then.
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"Cheat Sheets" (Score:1, Redundant)
Also, how well does this cover Mac topics? I'm curious about the (ugh!) integration sometimes required to connect PCs and Macs, especially for individuals and small businesses.
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If you really want, post a JE. Plenty of us here with nothing better to do than help a brother out.
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That last step's a doozy... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Kaspersky as my anti-virus, and while it's usually rated as one of the most effective, it's gotten really annoying. At first it was just the hundreds of megs of log-files, though I've mostly limited those. But some time in the last six months, its virus tables added some pattern that's in most of my Eudora mailfile backups, and it'll tell me file names but not position in the file. AFAICT, I received some email that either contained a vi
Nothing about PEBKAC? (Score:4, Funny)
Whats a BOFH to do?
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No service, therefore no denial!
I bought a Mac... (Score:2, Interesting)
There are many ways to secure yourself, and one of the easiest is to use an operating system that doesn't fill a huge percentage of the market.
I'm not a blind Mac Fanboy, but I have sight enough to see Apple offers computers that are more than sufficient for average home use. The flaws they had have disappeared. Admittedly, Windows has its place as well. I still keep a Windows box for gaming, I use Windows at work, and I troubleshoot it for friends and family who haven't made the switch.
But, for me, secur
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But then I coverted the rest of my family (parents, brother in law +sis, mother in law, sis in law) and a couple of friends to Macs, so I no longer need to do tech support for them. (Nothing worse than cleaning up spyware during a Christmas break over a 56k connection while everyone else is sipping cider..)
And then I replaced my gaming windows machine since Enemy Territory Quake Wars plays natively on Linux, so I don't even have to worry about the critical updates any more.
Good job,
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The Short, SHORT version... (Score:3, Funny)
(Apologies for the title to the Bishop in "Spaceballs")
They expect Joe SixPack to read this? Yeah right (Score:1, Insightful)
Just like driving a car, they don't care how it works, just how to use it and that they need to take it in for maintenance at regular intervals. Joe SixPack or my grandmother should take
Joe SixPack's Computers for Dummies (Score:4, Funny)
Chapter One: The Computer
The "computer" is the rectangular box with a few buttons on the front. The "monitor" is the box with the pretty pictures. These two terms are not interchangeable.
Chapter Two: The Internets
Also known as the "web", this is where porn comes from.
Chapter Three: Computer Security
Both the computer and the Internets are very dangerous - Terrorists use both. To keep your computer absolutely secure, DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING, EVER.
THE END
personal firewalls suck (Score:1)
They also confuse the user and teach him to "click accept or nothing will work", which is barely something you want your user to do.
It's a much more sensible advise to tell your user to turn off unnessesary services, especially since there are now simple applications which do that work for you.
http://www.dingens.org/index.html.en [dingens.org]
External Hardware Firewalls are critical (Score:2)
More important, though, is having an external firewall that keeps the riff-raff attacks off your computer, at l
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Speak for yourself, it depends on the firewall. I use Sunbelt kerio firewall and I wouldn't go back to a 'non-firewalled' existence. It has an application monitor which allows to gracefully disable and block 'phone home' or other 'ping/contact company server' on applications and to see what your apps are really doing behind your back.
Many apps these days try to communicate to a company server if just to ping it and/or send data back. All behind your back. No one can be truste
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Yes I do realize it's not perfect. But FYI it definitely works for some programs. You're thinking of extremely malicious programs that will try anything, I'm just trying to catch the basic ones, and yes you can stop programs: Disabling the network card temporarily for instance or using sai
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Temporarily disconnecting a computer won't do much good, as the software could just wait, or refuse to start without an internet connection.
Then there are the holes created by 'personal firewalls'. Not only have there been dozens of buffer
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The average user for certain doesn't understand much, but that's a failing of the industry itself and the engineering versus an economic challenge.
If we think of it in terms of traffic, the only way we'd ever remove traffic congestion and stop accidents (mostly barri
They won't read it (Score:4, Insightful)
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All in all, I'm gonna go ahead and call this a worthless read.
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That is exactly the attitude that I see in the world around me. People install Symantec and then think (without regard to whether the software license is up to date or not) that it should stop any kind of malicious software or hacking attempt ever.
That kind of thinking is the FAULT of Symantec et al. Yet, these same people would not drink old milk, or trust an aging condom? Go figure.
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Wireless security (Score:5, Informative)
There. My 2 cents are deposited.
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If you've got a crappy connection at home, it may suck, but it beats being out in the open.
At my university, ever since WEP was broken, most access points on campus have required users to log into the school's VPN to secure their connections in lieu of wireless enc
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ssh -D 1080 [<someuser>@]<somehost>
Now set your programs to use a SOCKS proxy of localhost:1080, and you're done. My macbook has Little Snitch, and I have it configured to deny all outbound traffic which isn't going to one of my trusted SSH servers, and only on port 22. This way I don't even have to worry about acc
Re:Wireless security (Score:5, Funny)
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Um, do you really enter your PayPal or CC info on a non-HTTPS connection? Because if you're on an HTTPS connection, there shouldn't be an issue. Your browser and the site itself have done a key exchange with RSA and are communicating with a very secure block cipher at that point. It does
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The attack was famously performed again
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I just opened my new D-Link DI-724GU [dlink.ca] wireless router and gigabit switch today and was honestly impressed at the warning posted inside that pointed out how any wireless networking product can leave your network exposed to third parties and insecure and that proper security
Re:Wireless security (Score:5, Informative)
WEP is useless.
Hardly. While WEP isn't very secure, it's enough to say "this is my network, don't connect to it". The lock on my door is probably pickable in 60 seconds too, with about as much skill involved.
It's true that WPA and WPA2 are a lot more secure, and there's little reason not to use them.
make sure that you're using AES with WPA, and not TKIP. TKIP is an implementation which uses less CPU, but is very similar to the way how WEP works. It's weak.
Not everyone agrees that security of your network is the MOST important thing. Compatibility, speed, etc is important too. TKIP is more than secure for the vast majority of people, and I'm unaware of any viable attacks on it.
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In addition, make sure that you're using AES with WPA, and not TKIP. TKIP is an implementation which uses less CPU, but is very similar to the way how WEP works. It's weak.
There is more trouble than that out there. Try running a wireless network with WPA2 and a number of different devices. You'll soon find out that your favorite Linux distro doesn't support the same options as your Mac, and let's not even get me started about windos broken support (which provides you absolutely no helpful error messages to tell you what the problem actually is). Oh, did I mention that it sometimes depends on your wireless card and the driver version?
So I run TKIP, because it happens to work
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The simple precautions of changing and hiding the network name (SSID) and changing the password will do a lot
No it will not! Changing your SSID doesn't do anything in terms of security.
Be wary of going to one extreme when fending off another.
Changing your SSID can, in fact, help with security, in the proper context. It's true that just changing it doesn't really help, however if you're using WPA with a PSK, changing your SSID may well keep you safe from a rainbow table crack.
Changing the admin password of the router helps a bit, but there exploits out there which can crack some of these passwords.
I don't know of any exploits which do this, but I don't know of any wireless routers which reject logins attempts after too many failures, either. However, this mostly implies that the user has access to the netwo
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Hardly. With 128-bit or 256-bit WEP, you still need to capture a few hundred MB of packets before you'll get the WEP key. This means an attacker needs to leave their laptop on capturing packets for a few hours to a few days, given the average home network's traffic. This is enough of a deterrent for most casual attackers.
Irresponsible ISPs (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, some people really need to use it, if they have more than one computer in the house. And there was no mention of protecting yourself from attacks coming from the Internet.
Simply irresponsible, I say, and by rights the ISP ought to be liable for it.
But... (Score:5, Funny)
That's the whole trouble (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the whole problem. If we need that much space to explain people how to be online without being owned, 90% of 'em won't read it, and will get owned.
Until we've solved that problem - and it's not a technological one, there is no geeky solution here - there is no real security for the average computer user.
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When you use a computer, you need to understand what you are doing. If you cannot do this, you need to consult with a professional who can tell you if you're doing something that will get you pwned.
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You don't need to read a 240 page book to operate a car. You need a few driving lessons, but after that you can drive most cars without reading the manual first. Why's that?
And no, computer security isn't a terribly complicated beast that can never be "dumbed down". The fact that we believe that today is a sign that we're still at the beginnings - 100 years ago, cars were terribly complicated beasts, too. Starting one up was a tricky thing that required a series of steps made in precise
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And still, cars are a lot less dangerous than they used to be, while simultaneously easier to use.
Computers? Hardly.
The point is still that as long as it is difficult to set up some basic security, few people will do it. And it isn't that terribly difficult, really.
One example: I have sudo or the equivalent on any system available now, even something similar on windos. And yet, there is absolutely no feedback whatsoever if the current window or app is running with elevated privileges or not.
Symantec Guide (Score:5, Funny)
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Haha and all that.
What about us poor suckers who have the unenviable task of supporting systems with Symantec preinstalled? My father was given an HP a year ago running this piece of crap on XP and it has given me no shortage of headaches. The fucker takes ages to boot up and more than half the time it refuses to acknowledge the network. I got so tired of wasting time with the damn thing I gave him a lesser box running Ubuntu. Not a word of complaint since. Still, I keep the HP around becaus
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In my opinon, most Symantec products are more difficult to clean from a system than the malware they're supposed to protect against. The only way to get rid of it is to nuke and repave Windows.
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I'm not afraid, of course, to just go into the registry, and simply wipe out an offending program from system services. That's the fastest way to kill Norton's Internet Security crapola.
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I did a reinstall of XP,drivers,games, etc., and i went out and bought Kaspersky Suite.
Kaspersky does a better job and second its russian, so no danger of DHS NSA trojans.
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On the other hand, I have to ask myself why I should listen to a guy who is stuck supporting software he hates, rather than really doing anything about it. You're basically irrelevant so long as the corporation has made management happy. Management is happy because the consultants took care of some hair-on-fire issue worth $1m in revenue and then took them out to lunch (and billed them for it). M
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It's an old book (Score:5, Informative)
I was wondering why there wasn't any mention of Vista in the review.
Misread the title (Score:2)
AOSS is the way for the general public. (Score:2)
But for the average schmuck who just stolled home with a new "link-sees" wireless box and new wireless laptop 'puter - they won't bother setting up security, they'll stop when the lights are blinkin' and the porn is streaming.
AOSS seems to be the way to go if more manufactures supported it. Push a button on the access point, and it goes into training mode f
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Likewise. Indeed, I'm starting to write a simple security policy for the house, which I'll agree with my wife as the other stakeholder, so that I have a canned basis to agree or disagree to things other users (wife, kids, visitors) may want to do. Consider is ISO27001 for small companies. I've built firewalls, hardened Unix boxes, and indeed was pro
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Hmm, perhaps that's the issue I'm having with my Wii's wireless being flaky.
I actually moved it to a hidden 802.11b WAP11 sitting on my DMZ... I got so sick of it flaking out that I left it running unencrypted for a while to see if it was my 802.11g AP or my firewall causing problems. Next up, as recommended by a friend of mine, tcpdump to see wtf the wii is doing.
In other news... (Score:1)
Target audience (Score:2)
My guide (Score:2, Insightful)
For one thing use good antivirus software (Score:1, Redundant)
see also the heidi fleiss guide to home sex .. (Score:2)
minority report .. (Score:2)
Would this machine be a Microsoft Windows machine or any other kind of 'computer'?
"Chapter 3
Does it say they don't work, especially the software ones. They are ineffectual as things like RPC over HTTP and SOAP are designed to - bypass the firewall.
'The following two chapters cover the
Re:Symantec? Uh, anyone else have an opinion? (Score:5, Informative)
In 1990, he sold his company to Symantec. Since then, their products have been gradually rebranded and have consistently sucked. Symantec seem under the delusion that their brand is now worth what the Norton brand was worth in the '80s (which, if you ignore inflation, it might be...).
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I wouldn't put too much weight on that though. Your "fellow slashdot user" [slashdot.org] doesn't seem to be too much of a user, with apparently only 5 comments to their name (dating from 2004/2005!), and nothing in the last two years.
Funny, then, that their next appearance is to pop up with a review of an out-of-date book from about that same time, but submitted [slashdot.org] last Tuesday...
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Seriously though, even if you don't trust the recommendation of this user, the book seems to have gotten fairly good reviews over on amazon as well.
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My interest in the reviewer was more like "A poster who hasn't commented in 2 years gets a review of a 2 year old book posted on the front page? How bizarre. Oh well, at least it isn't a dupe!"
Honestly, when I started looking I expected to find that it'd been sitting in the submission queue since 2005, not last Tuesday...
M
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Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice review. No idea why you posted it here though.
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Which is why I mentioned about.com as my example. It's a mainstream site, and it contains all the information this book does, and more, for free as in beer.
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That may be true for values of "we" that are Windows power users, but what about those of us whose solution to avoiding Windows viruses is "open all files in a different OS"? We've got clueless relatives to support too, you know, and that's hard when we're equally clueless. My dad's job requires him to open Office documents from "high virus risk" senders (so a book that educated him alone would be insufficient), yet the Norton virus scan on those documents is so slow that he's look
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Well, I was hoping to be informed that Microsoft had eventually figured out not to run unsandboxed executable content in a document editor, thus making anti-virus scans of Office files unnecessary, but "a recommendation for non-crap AV" is almost as good. Thank you very much.
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