Security With Broadband

I went live with BB (via Demon) a couple of weeks ago.

I want some advice on the best way to ensure my home network is secure
and avoid having to buy 5 copies of F/W an A/V software.

Is this an appropriate group to ask in?

I looked at uk.comp.security but it's very low volume and I was
slightly put off by one subject line of 'Bill Gates uses spybots to see
your penis !!!!', which may or may not be true but won't help me secure
my network :-)


--
Jeff Gaines
Posted with XanaNews 1.17.2.1

If you have a broadband router with firewall, you have some safety. But I'd
still run something like ZoneAlarm (free download) on each PC. Set
ZoneAlarm to deny all access to the network and then selectively enable
applications as you see fit.

You also need at least a copy of A/V that will check networked drives. You
can then network all the drives to the one PC and have it check them. But
beware that this could be slow over the network - you'll just have to try it
and see whether this works. Be sure to run a full scan every night to catch
anything that gets through.

Also, if you go this A/V route, I'd run a small batch job periodically that
checks the network drives, restores them if they fail (try running a quick
dir) and if all else fails, beeps madly until you sort out the problem.
Schedule this task ever hour or so to ensure that the network shares stay
up.

Finally, have you come across AdAware and its ilk? My father's machine was
infested with spyware which was not detected as a virus but which caused all
manner of hell. Running AdAware (again, there is a free download
www.lavasoft.com) periodically will keep such nasties at bay.

Be afraid, be very afraid and you can't go wrong. Drop your guard and you
will ;-).

Paul DS.

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed), a.k.a Jeff Gaines says...
>
> I went live with BB (via Demon) a couple of weeks ago.
>
> I want some advice on the best way to ensure my home network is secure
> and avoid having to buy 5 copies of F/W an A/V software.

If you want "the best way" then cost is perhaps inevitable.

A NAT router, decent AV (NOD32) some anti-spyware software (AD-Aware,
Spywareblaster are both free) a trojan killer, and you should be fine.

You could also try a "2nd level" software firewall on each PC for added
security over and above the NAT router.

No-cost software equals AVG7, Avast, or AntiVir for your anti-virus
solution ; Zone Alarm or Sygate firewalls.

A great (but can be annoying) bit of kit is called "Process Guard" and
this works in not too dissimilar fashion to a firewall (but only one
way) in that it alerts you every time *anything* on your PC wants to
execute. You create rules to not keep getting reminded, so after a
while, it should run almost invisibly.

Exercise the same caution you undoubtedly did with anything MS (IE6 etc)
when on dial-up/ISDN.

On 04/02/2005 Paul D.Smith wrote:

> Be afraid, be very afraid and you can't go wrong. Drop your guard
> and you will ;-).


I am afraid :-)

I dialled up once, just to get an updated driver, about a year ago
before I installed my firewall. I was hit by teekids within 20 seconds
of connecting.

I now use a Linksys modem/router/WAP so there is some reasonable F/W
protection in there.

I am an inveterate tinkerer and as a consequence I am always
re-installing the OS (probably every six weeks or so) and I want to try
and avoid the time taken to install Norton, AdAware, S&D etc. and then
update them all.

What I was thinking about was setting up a spare machine with
smoothwall on it and using that as a firewall.

However, if I would then still need A/V protection on each PC I am not
any further forward - and I have another PC to maintain. If it would
mean I wouldn't need A/V on each PC though it would be worthwhile.
However, it seems to me that just doing all my downloading, browsing
etc. through a Linux F/W is not going to reduce the need for A/V S/W.

Any thoughts on that?

--
Jeff Gaines
Posted with XanaNews 1.17.2.1

Jeff Gaines wrote:

>
> I went live with BB (via Demon) a couple of weeks ago.
>
> I want some advice on the best way to ensure my home network is secure
> and avoid having to buy 5 copies of F/W an A/V software.
>
> Is this an appropriate group to ask in?
>
> I looked at uk.comp.security but it's very low volume and I was
> slightly put off by one subject line of 'Bill Gates uses spybots to see
> your penis !!!!', which may or may not be true but won't help me secure
> my network :-)

As well as the other advise you are being given
you can also download liveCDs, boot up off them
and browse/download from internet.
Mepis,Knoppix,Kanotix,Quantian,gnoppix are all good
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

The liveCDs are totally autoconfiguring, but its
helpful if you have PCI ethernet card on PC so that
they can fully autoconfigure without having to
tweek it (USB unfortunately for now will need tweeking).

On 04/02/2005 Tx2 wrote:

> > I want some advice on the best way to ensure my home network is
> > secure and avoid having to buy 5 copies of F/W an A/V software.
>
> If you want "the best way" then cost is perhaps inevitable.


Can I bounce another idea, having attempted to install smoothwall it
doesn't recognise my NIC so...

If I have 1 PC, say JGINET, and put 2 NIC's in it, connect 1 NIC to the
Linksys Modem with a fixed address of 192.168.1.2 (the router uses 1).
Then the second NIC goes to a second router with an IP address of
192.168.2.1. I then connect the other PC's to this second router using
the same address range. All PC's to have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.

If I've understood things the only PC that would be able to see the
Internet would be JGINET. The other PC's would see each other and
JGINET. That way I can protect JGINET to the hilt and that would be the
only PC that I could use on the Internet. My mail would be checked by
Norton and any downloads also checked. I can then move any downloaded
files to the other PC's knowing that Norton has checked them on the way
in.

Is that logic correct or would the 192.168.2.x PC's still be able to
see the Internet and thus be at risk?


--
Jeff Gaines
Posted with XanaNews 1.17.2.1

Jeff Gaines wrote:
> I am an inveterate tinkerer and as a consequence I am always
> re-installing the OS (probably every six weeks or so) and I want to try
> and avoid the time taken to install Norton, AdAware, S&D etc. and then
> update them all.

It may be possible to slipstream some of these programs with Windows XP
(along with the latest Windows updates etc)? You would still need to
update them, maybe keep copies of the latest updates somewhere on the
network.

> What I was thinking about was setting up a spare machine with
> smoothwall on it and using that as a firewall.
>
> However, if I would then still need A/V protection on each PC I am not
> any further forward - and I have another PC to maintain. If it would
> mean I wouldn't need A/V on each PC though it would be worthwhile.
> However, it seems to me that just doing all my downloading, browsing
> etc. through a Linux F/W is not going to reduce the need for A/V S/W.
>
> Any thoughts on that?

You could run an email server (Linux based?) with a virus checker on it.
Obviously it won't stop viruses from downloaded files.

I'm surprised no one has suggested using Firefox yet, it has much less
risk of spyware etc than IE.

--
Craig Wallace
http://craig.neogeo.org.uk
http://www.neogeo.org.uk

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Jeff Gaines says...
>
> I went live with BB (via Demon) a couple of weeks ago.
>
> I want some advice on the best way to ensure my home network is secure
> and avoid having to buy 5 copies of F/W an A/V software.
>
Pay? There's plenty of Freeware out there.

Sygate Personal Firewall...free.
Grisoft AVG7...free.


--
Conor

An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan.
-- George Patton

> You could run an email server (Linux based?) with a virus checker on it.
> Obviously it won't stop viruses from downloaded files.
>
> I'm surprised no one has suggested using Firefox yet, it has much less
> risk of spyware etc than IE.

Of course everyone assumed he used a version of windows as the OP never
said. If he is using Linux and does'nt know much about it, then most of
the sdvice given is pointless.

Dave

--
For what we are about to balls up may common sense prevent us doing it
again
in the future!!

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed),
a.k.a Dave Stanton says...


> Of course everyone assumed he used a version of windows as the OP never
> said.

He certainly mentioned Win32 exclusive utilities ... and is posting
using XanaNews, a Win32 app.