Keeping your system patched up and protected

Computers aren't perfect. In fact, they're really stupid and will do exactly what you tell them. If you tell them to make a pizza, they'd do it if they had arms and legs. But, if you tell them to wipe a hard drive, they'll do it. If you tell it to turn off, it'll do it. If you give it some really complicated instructions where you confuse the computer so bad that you've made it through its security checks and can now run whatever code you want, that's an exploit. That's why you need to update your system with the latest security updates and keep it protected against viruses when necessary.

No matter what operating system you're using be it Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X Tiger (10.4), Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), one of many Linux distributions, or even phones or tablets like iPhones, Blackberries, Android phones and tablets, or iPods, iPads, or even a HUMANCENTiPad, it has a chance of being exploited. If you happen to go to the wrong website or run the wrong program or application, crazy things can happen to your device. It could be as simple as a virus deleting everything on your computer, or as troublesome as a worm getting all of your personal info and sending the worm to everyone on your contact list to get their info.

So why don't I start explaining some good practices on preventing this stuff. First I'll go into installing security updates, then I'll talk about anti-virus software.

Installing Updates

First off, I'll start off with the most likely thing that you'll need security updates for. Your operating system.

Windows XP

In Windows XP, Automatic Updates will automatically check for and download updates once a day. Some updates will install immediately, but others will require that you restart the computer and notify you of this when you try to shut down Windows. If you'd like to check for updates manually, Windows Update can be found in the Start Menu. Click Start -> All Programs and Windows Update should be at the top. You can also run Windows Update either by going to http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate or clicking the Windows Update option in Windows Internet Explorer. In Windows XP, you are required to use Windows Internet Explorer to run Windows Update.

If the image at the top-left says Windows Update, then you may see a suggestion at the right of the screen telling you to use Microsoft Update. Microsoft Update will allow you to easily install updates for all installed Microsoft applications in addition to updating the operating system itself. I recommend enabling it. Anyway, you can choose custom or express depending on what you think you'll want to update. Microsoft Update will let you update Windows itself, any Microsoft Office applications you have installed, Silverlight, Internet Explorer, etc.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Windows Update works pretty much the same in Windows Vista and 7 as it did in XP, except instead of running in Internet Explorer, it now runs from within the Control Panel. I think Microsoft Update is enabled in the setting, although there might be a notice below the update info the first time you use Windows Update. I don't remember.

Mac OS X

Accessing Apple Software Update is very simple. Simply click the Apple Menu at the upper-left corner of the screen and choose Software Update. Run it, and you can choose what you want to update. It'll pop-up every so often if there are updates. In Mac OS X Tiger and earlier, Software Update defaulted to not downloading updates automatically, while in Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard it does. Some updates need a reboot though.

There is also an Apple Software Update for Windows. It's pretty similar, but it also lets you easily install other Apple software. You can find it located in the start menu.

Windows Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is only available for... Windows. You can update it from Windows Update, which I explained above. The highest version you can run on Windows XP is IE8, IE9 for Vista, and IE10 once released will only run on Windows 7. Seriously, IE6 is so broken in terms of web standards and is full of security holes, that the only reason to run it is if your business software requires it. Not to mention that it's nearly 10 years old. Since IE9 isn't available for Windows XP, I'd recommend running Firefox, Chrome, or Opera.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 4 will run on Windows 2000 and up, Mac OS X 10.5 and up, and many Linux distributions. Updates are set to automatically download and install by default. In Firefox 3.6 and below, you can check for updates in Help -> Check For Updates. In Firefox 4.0 and above, you need to go to the About Firefox window. On Mac, you go to Firefox (Application Menu) -> About Firefox . On Windows, if the Menu Bar is enabled, go to Help -> About Firefox, or if it's disabled, go to Firefox Button -> Help -> About Firefox. The Check For Updates button will only appear if you disabled auto-downloading updates, but it'll still check for updates when you go to the About Firefox window if auto-update is enabled.. You just won't need to click a button as it'll check for and install the update automatically.

 

Google Chrome

Chrome will run on Windows XP and up, Mac OS X 10.5 and up, and many Linux distributions. Chrome automatically downloads updates in the background with no easy way to turn that off. You can check if you have the latest version by clicking on the Wrench Menu -> About Google Chrome. If there's a newer version available, you can click update now to update it.

Opera

I'll keep this short since I haven't used Opera much. It has a built-in updater, but I'm not sure whether it automatically downloads and installs updates by default. It probably does.

Apple Safari

Safari will run on Mac OS X 10.5 and up, and Windows XP and up. I think it updates with whatever you have Apple Software Update set to.

Updating Plugins

There's lots of stuff that the browser can do by itself. For whatever other technologies you might need to run in the browser (like Adobe Flash), there's plugins. Probably the simplest way to check if your plugins are up to date is to use Mozilla's Plugin Check. It'll say whether or not it thinks your plugins are up to date and it works with all browsers, although it might not work as well with Internet Explorer since it uses a different type of plugin. I embedded the plugin checker badge on the right side of my blog. If you click on it, it'll bring you to the page I just linked to. In Firefox 3.6 you were able to get there easily by going to Tools -> Addons -> Plugins -> Check For Updates , but for some reason they removed that in Firefox 4.

To update the plugins on Windows, the simplest way would be to wait for something to pop up and ask you to install updates. Flash and Java both do this, but if you want to update them yourself, you can update Java by going to the Java options in the Windows Control panel and clicking check for updates, or update flash by going to their website and downloading and installing the update. You can update your PDF Reader (likely Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader), by running it and checking for updates. To update Silverlight, just run Windows Update. And you can update Quicktime from Apple Software Update.

To update Java or Quicktime on Mac, just run Software Update. To update Silverlight or Flash, you need to download and install them from their respective websites. The Mozilla Plugin Check page

Chrome bundles a PDF Reader and the Adobe Flash player. So if there's a new update for Flash, Chrome will include it in their next update.

Protecting yourself from Viruses and Spyware

Windows. It has a 80% marketshare or something, but I don't feel like looking up any actual statistics, and there's no way to know how accurate they are. But I digress. But Windows is well known for having lots of viruses and spyware and stuff available for it. Luckily though, there is lots of anti-virus and security software available. Some cost money, some don't. But in my opinion, there isn't really a reason to pay for an antivirus unless you don't mind spending money and are okay with spending money on software that you think is better than free ones. Some paid AVs are better than free ones, but I think the free ones do the job nicely. Also, they're usually only free for personal use.

Here is a list of free antivirus software listed in a random order:

Avira Antivir Personal
Microsoft Security Essentials
AVG Free
Avast! Home

They're all free for personal use, and all have on-access (automatically scan when it access a file) scanning. I prefer the top 2 in the list, which really did come up randomly when I entered the list on random.org .

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Even though the above scan for spyware, I still like to use another spyware scanner just to make sure that there's nothing that the AV didn't catch. I use MalwareBytes AntiMalware. It's shareware, so some features are free but some require that you pay for the application. Also, it only supports on-demand scanning (it scans when you choose to). I usually run a scan with MBAM after running my AV. There's also Super Anti Spyware available which I think is also shareware, but I haven't used it.

If you want a free antivirus, or want to scan files on linux or Mac to avoid giving viruses to windows computers, use a variant of ClamAV. It's free and open-source. I think it has a sentry mode that allows it to scan files on-access. I've heard that it's not as good as the proprietary AVs, but it's still better than nothing.

But even taking all of that into consideration, there's still threats that no type of software can prevent.....




*   - Screenshot taken from Softpedia. http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/AVG-Free-Edition-Screenshot-6858.html
** - Screenshot taken from Softpedia. http://www.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Avast-Home-Edition-Screenshot-6474.html