Any computer wizz's here?

[spacesailor]

I have to. Thank my benefactor, for my Xmass pressy ".

The " Linux " USB  drive .

Now one question  !  .

Will "Linux " preserve my hard drive intact

Or

Will I loose the C content's.  . That's the reason for not jumping in with repairing my desktop.  

and laziness.  LoL

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

It will utlimately depend on the particular distro, but all the main ones allow you to boot up without using your hard drive at all. That is, it treats your USB stick as the only hard drive (you can save files to it, etc).

 

First, set your BIOS to boot up from the USB first, then the CD drive (if you have one), and then the hard drive. 

 

Then, stick your USB drive on and boot her up. The boot loader should give you a choice of something like demo (it willl run Linuux and you can play with it but not save anything); boot from USB (where it will only use the USB - note, this will be slow as the USB is slower than a disk drive), or install. Don't choose install as it will wipe your hard drive.

 

You may want to check the internet depending on your distro, but if you boot from the USB (not in demo mode), you should be able to mount the hard drive and then look at its contents. There are open source tools recover data from damaged platters as long as the actual mechanism and circuitry itself is not damaged.

 

Ultimtely, it will depend on what is stuffed on your computer. If the hard drive is knackered, you may have to send it to the shop for repairs. Note, it is a specialist function but can be done depending on how badly scratched up the platters are:

 

Edited January 1 by Jerry_Atrick

[nomadpete]

Space has a minimal Puppy Linux distro. It runs totally from the thumb drive, and does not mess with hard drives unless the user really starts changing files. (Assuming the system can in fact 'see' the hard drive.

 

I have used it to copy files from a hard drive, onto another blank thumb drive without causing any changes to the hard drive. It has a simple file manager, and a simple User Interface so.ewhat similar to the old Windows 98 screen - no tricks are needed.

[nomadpete]

Starting screen pic below.

 

Along the left corner of screen, the hard drive will probably have a little icon labelled SDA1. One mouse click will open the drive in a file manager for you to view or copy it's contents.

 

Near that, an icon SDB1 will be the USB stick - you don't  need to look at that.

Edited January 1 by nomadpete

[spacesailor]

Many thanks, I will have to get my A into gear .

It's In, It's original boxes . Next to It's predecessor , a ' Windows 7 desktop. 

spacesailor

[willedoo]

Been having a bit of fun checking out anti virus programmes. I've never had a paid subscription AV programme and have always used the free versions. For many years I used AVG until I found out they were collecting every bit of users data and selling it to another company. I think that happened when Avast bought them out. Avast got caught out doing it and supposedly stopped the practice and issued a public apology to their users in 2020. At the moment there's a class action against them for compensation.

 

After AVG, I used Avira for a while, then went to Avast until a few days ago. I got rid of it as they've gone overboard on their URL blacklist and have blocked webpages I know are ok. I couldn't find any way to add exceptions in the free version so gave them the flick. I thought I'd try AVG again but encountered the same problem, then found out they are basically the same with different brand names.

 

The next one I tried was Total AV. It had never ending pop up nags to upgrade to paid versions and I found out it doesn't have real time protection in the free version. All you can do is scan for bugs it allowed you to get. I don't understand that business model. The idea of free programmes is to give you a taste of something good to encourage you to stay with them and take out a subscription for the fully featured version. Total AV's idea is to offer a bad, insecure free version and promise it will be better if you pay. Strike that bunch of losers.

 

I did the usual top 10 searches and then tried Bitdefender's free version. So far I'm quite happy with it. It has a good interface, minimal nagging, real time protection and by using cloud based scanning, is not a resource hog like some of them. I'll see how it goes for a while before I think about subscribing for the first time ever. It's the fourth AV programme I've had on the computer in a few days, but it seems ok.

[red750]

I get emails almost daily saying I am at risk because my Mcaffee subscription has expired, demanding urgent payment. I haven't used Mcaffee, certainly not since founder John Mcaffee died in prison on the US in June, 2021. My wife had the paid version of Avast on her laptop, I have used the free version. 

 

 

 

[spacesailor]

I've taken the plunge! .

Downloaded & installed , " bitdefender " .

Now will it keep me SAFE .

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

Only if you're a bit.

[willedoo]

38 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

Only if you're a bit.

As long as he's not a bit short like the computer programmer's parrot.

[onetrack]

I've used Malwarebytes previously and it worked just fine, but I only ever used the free version. SWMBO is more nervous than me and uses the fully paid version. I have no AV with my Windows 11 yet - MS keeps telling me how well protected I am with their superior security measures!

 

I have the attitude that 99% of the viruses, trojans and keyboard loggers come from emails, so I rely on Mailwasher to sort the scumbags out, and I can ID them and examine and delete them before they even get a chance to download to my hard drive.

 

When a court recording system can be hacked by scumbags, it either shows how easy it is to bypass AV systems - or the courts were using no security measures at all.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/02/victoria-court-recording-hack-details

 

You find out time and time again, the only thing scammers and scumbags are interested in is if you have lots of stuff to steal and tell people about it.

 

I'm most wary of mobile phones, I consider them a 100 times more risky than a laptop or desktop. We were in a cafe recently, and overheard a couple discussing the dramas and major losses incurred by a friend who had his boat stolen (by a woman, no less!) - and he'd left his phone on his boat, and she'd accessed all his accounts from his phone, and caused him major losses and much inconvenience.

 

I refuse to do any payments with my phone, I store no passwords on it, and I do very little banking on it, and anyone who stole my phone would get very little useful info from it.

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

The bloke in the vid I posted here thinks that Windows defendeer is the bees knees and nothing else is needed:

 

I am a little more scpetical than that... as it is free with the OS.. but I have nothing to back up what he or I say.

[nomadpete]

I am concerned about security - phone and pc.

 

However, all the antivirus programs snd the malware protection programs seem to be similar to the alternative health industry. All talk and little proof of efficacy.

Snake oil?  Or salvation?

 

What about the hackability of password lockers?

 

Or of biometric access?

[red750]

Ran a deep scan of my system last night, took over half an hour. Found a couple of phishing bots which I removed.

 

Some people have difficulty selecting passwords, and have trouble remembering them if they've used random letters and numbers. I use a couple of formats, depending on what they are used for. NOTE: These are not my passwords.

 

Format 1. Car, rego, symbol.  eg.   Corolla1DT8JQ%  (Vic rego format 1XX-9YY)

Format 2. Wife's maiden name (or part), wedding anniv, wife's initials.  eg. Thom14041987MJ (Maiden name Thompson) Add a symbol if required.

Format 3. Mother in law's given names, her birthday eg. MaryLouise1409 . 

 

They all have a meaning which makes them easier to remember, and anyone trying to crak them would need to know quite a bit about me to guess them. They fit the requirement of most websites - at least 8 characters long, at least one uppercase letter, one number, and some require a symbol.

[facthunter]

I use symbols rather than letters and it soon shows as very secure..  Sample @8(]Yx,&7%$  Don't concentrate on something you can remember. Nev

[red750]

How often do you forget a password like that?

[facthunter]

Nearly ALL the time.  That's why it's more secure.   Nev

[nomadpete]

So secure it even keeps Nev out.

[facthunter]

I'm sure you will find a solution being curious and inventive.   Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

That password would not take more than a few minutes to crack using a brute force attack. 

 

Long passwords are the key...

 

I use the first line of a song, the names and dates of memorable (to me) events and the like.

 

Actually,my son came up with a nifty bit of code where you key in your password and it hashes and rehashed and uses the hash (which is 128 bytes long) as the password. 

 

When you want to log in you key your password into his code and voilla! You use the generated hash to log in.

 

Problem is some sites, like banks, restrict the size and characters that can be used in passwords

 

 

Edited January 3 by Jerry_Atrick

[facthunter]

Why do even shorter ones show up as very secure?  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

Old algoritmms

 

https://www.it.ucsb.edu/secure-compute-research-environment-user-guide/password-best-practices

Edited January 3 by Jerry_Atrick

[onetrack]

I use the Latin genus and species name of plants I know, with added favourite numbers, and a symbol. Guaranteed to bugger up hack attempts.

 

Edited January 3 by onetrack

[willedoo]

23 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

That password would not take more than a few minutes to crack using a brute force attack. 

 

Long passwords are the key...

 

I use the first line of a song, the names and dates of memorable (to me) events and the like.

 

Actually,my son came up with a nifty bit of code where you key in your password and it hashes and rehashed and uses the hash (which is 128 bytes long) as the password. 

 

When you want to log in you key your password into his code and voilla! You use the generated hash to log in.

 

Problem is some sites, like banks, restrict the size and characters that can be used in passwords

 

 

  Back in the XP days I tested my administrator and safe mode master administrator passwords with Ophcrack. They were both all letters, lower case, with one being twelve letters long and the other thirteen letters. I timed it at three minutes to crack the passwords. An all letter password in single case is easy to crack no matter how many letters are there.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Any system I implement these days does the following:

• Between failed attempts, increase the time before allowing the user eto enter the password again. This is not an issue for users, but a real pain for password crackers and bute force attack software.
• After a number of consecutive failed attempts (usually three), send an email to the user and block access for a period of time (usually 3 - 5 minutes).
• After a number of repeated blocks, send an email to the user with a link to unblock the account and block it until the link is activated.
• Minimum length passwords, and include leading and trailing whiotespace if it is put in (warning the users they have it when they set their passwords).

 

If there is multi-factor authentication, then I take a slightly different approach.

 

BTW, account cracking epresents a small proprotion of the cyber breaches, torjan horses (bad links, or malicious attachments) are by far the bigger.

 

If you want to leanr about cybersecurity, create a download a virtual machine (VMWares is the best) and instal Kali Linuux on it. It come prebundled as a penetration testing machone (well, effectively and has most tools used by crims.

 

 

Edited January 4 by Jerry_Atrick