How to Protect your PC from Spies for FREE

Here's my method, feel free to try it out although it won't be everyones cup of tea. I use different os' for different things. For gaming I use win xp (and only for gaming, windows truly sucks on all other levels).... For video/ quick and harmless sites/ surfing I use mac osx (google hackint0sh) and for "deep" browsing I use puppy Linux, a 90mb free os that does everything a bigger os does, except it's stored and booted off a small flashdrive (mine is 4gb). The beauty of it is that because it runs off a flash drive, only that drive is open to attack, you would have to mount any other drives or partitions to open them to attack. Not to say a haxx0r couldn't, but with the built in systems moniters it wouldn't be hard to notice. 1 computer, 3 os', ne'er a virus yet (Knox on wood). Just use another flashdrive/sd chip formatted fat for transfer of files between the os'. There are other small Linux distros that will boot off a flash drive or even cdrw, though I like puppy as the community is great and very supportive, as even the most l33t of us sometimes need command line help every once in a while. Hope this helps! Good topic btw OP!

Ps, firefox has excellent plugins for security and privacy regardless of os, try tor, privoxy, better privacy, etc. Be aware, using tor and proxies could lead to closer scrutiny of your activities by thePTB, who could probably (& probably have) hack anyone. You'll be safer from "regular" hacks though.

reply to post by siahchi


Good method, I used to do the tri boot deal until I switched to my Vbox method. I'm sure both method's have their ups and downs. I had a friend do the USB drive linux deal and it's pretty neat since you can basically take your entire OS with you where ever you go.

As far as government spying on your PC goes. I've seen video of NSA tech centers that spy on cell phone and other electronic communications, I'll try to find the vid, but it's probably been posted here before. Anyway the thing I noticed is that the effort is massive, involving thousands of employees. Having that many employees I can imagine that it's not all that dissimilar to the IT departments I've worked in which have probably 1 or 2 really skilled technicians, then a few fairly capable technicians followed by a good number of techs that aren't all that knowledgeable but serve well for overflow on busy days. So basically you'd probably have to be pretty high on the priority list to warrant the highly skilled government hackers to invest time in your PC.

I thought it might be a good idea to start a subject on protecting your computer for those of us out there that aren't technically savvy. So anyone out there with other method's of protection feel free to post up your ideas.

I almost posted this in the science and technology section, but thought Skunk Works would be more fun.

Keyboard virus. C'mon. Unlikely. Next thing is that pixels will be infected.

MBR rootkit (that isn't removed with a standard f&r) - more likely

A keyboard has no memory in it. The keyboard buffer (which is part of the bios) has the buffer. It will hold approx 250 or so characters, if I remember correctly.

I did manage to infect my sunglasses (spy camera) with a virus, with no damage to the glasses.

True Symbiot, you would probably have to be high on a list for increased scrutiny, however there are farms, vast server farms that basically store every piece of electronic information sent over a network. So, say you're good now, but ten years from now run for public office against an insider, they will scrutinize all your accumulated electronic files and could use that against you. Just an example. Spoof your MAC address maybe? That might work. Either way, this is a great thread and you are right, skunk works is more fun for this!

In keeping with the spirit of "skunk works", how hard do you think it would be to write a new os from the ground up, with a new variety of file format, that no one else is familiar with? In theory, this would be for secure personal use, not something many would know about and certainly not for sale. I write html and java, and can create command line gui's for linux with gtkdialogue. What would be a good, simple enough language to write an os in? C/C+ languages are too complex for simplicities sake. Love this thread!


sykickvision, sorry to break it to you, "pixels" have been able to be infected since at least 2002... Here's some links to get you started: www.monstersandcritics.com...

www.symantec.com...


Symbiot, could you post a link to the nsa vids? Now that would be interesting...

Heres a article on the Mac keyboard hack.
www.zdnet.com...

reply to post by siahchi


I haven't been able to find the video, it's buried in an old thread on another site somewhere, I'll try to look for it again tomorrow. In the mean time here's a wiki about it: en.wikipedia.org...

That's talking about the same database stuff you're talking about so you probably already know about it. The video was neat because it had shots from inside one of the buildings. It was talking about a joint international effort between the US, several European countries and Australia I think. I guess the inside of the building wasn't all that interesting, basically an office building with cubicles except everyone was in a uniform instead of a suit.

As far as programming a simple OS that utilizes a different file format. Well probably not all that hard, might be somewhat time consuming depending on how many different pieces of hardware you'd want to make it compatible with, but I suppose if it were for personal use you'd really only need compatibility with your own systems hardware. For the most part, as far as what the end user sees, an OS is just a fancy file manager. I know a little C++ and like you said that language is growing older by the minute. I've been teaching myself Python for a while now and I really like it. Writing in Python is significantly faster than C++ because a lot of unnecessary writing has been removed, no semi colons after a statement, no open/close brackets for functions or if/then statements just tab your code. Plus rather than compiling the code after writing the code is compiled as it is run, because of this it runs a bit slower than other codes. I suppose you could say it's faster for the programmer and slightly slower for the end user. Now creating your own file format is easy as pie, heck you could take the windows dll file format and change it to start every line with the number 1 and call it your own file format. If you were creating your own OS then any core file for the OS would probably end up being it's own format specific to how you wrote it unless you were putting forth an effort to make the format the same as another OS.

I've actually been toying around with writing a fancy schmancy 3D file manager in Python, I thought the standard file manager was due for a makeover. In fact the thought had crossed my mind to go ahead and make it a full fledged OS, but I haven't come anywhere near the research I'd need to actually get that idea off of the ground. Couldn't say how long it'd be until I'm done with that, I'm working on another programming/design project at the same time, the two are related to some degree though.

reply to post by Symbiot


the only way todo this is to have the machine fully offline and never connected to any network or usb stick

don't see any mention of a dnschanger in this thread,

assuming the user is using a router, there are pieces of malware that can change the dns server addresses in a router,

your pc could in fact be clean, but you could be sent to websites that will add 'little extra goodies' to make your pc interesting,

so using a vm will still need access to the internet via your router, grabbing that dns changer on your rounds,
once you shut the vm down and believe that thats's it, you suddenly find your 'real' machine being re-directed all over,

because the malware has changed your router settings

just my bit

reply to post by Symbiot


In the mid 90's I had a collection of live virus's on floppy's. I think there around 150 or so. Eventually burned them to CD. That CD almost cost me my kush IT job early on. Was moving WORM drives around in a robotic jukebox and had the virus CD on my desk. Boss asks about it and I explain and she flips for a moment. Ultimately the disk was banned. Not like I planned to run that disk at work... Was a electronic zoo of sorts.
It was an art to get a working program in only a few lines of code back in the day.

reply to post by solvectra


Interesting, but if you block literally everything with your firewall, except for the virtual machine then your host machine won't be re-directed because it's never directed in the first place. My host machine doesn't even update the clock.

Anyway that's the way I see it, what do you think?

reply to post by staple


I can see why that might frighten your employer a bit. Why did you have that CD in the first place, were you planning on studying the malicious apps or something? I imagine companies like Norton probably have discs like that, locked up I would imagine.

It's interesting how programming a virus can get you a job at an anti-virus company, it's like a resume these days.

If it's FREE it isn't protecting your computer.

Give up on finding alternatives and buy Norton Internet Security.

reply to post by HybridEB


Linux is free and linux is protecting my computer a heck of a lot better then windows ever did
I can't imagine ever going back to windows.
www.whylinuxisbetter.net...