Dealing with Viruses, Worms, Spyware, Patches and Spam
How to Protect your PC

Camden Computing Services
11/29/2005 (Stan Kolasa)

There are many nasty pieces of software on the internet that may invade your office/home/work pc and cause problems.  Below we look at the various problems and solutions.   Following all of the below steps will be a good way to keep your system secure and functioning properly.   Camden Computing Services recommends all of the following.

I. Spyware

Has your PC ever behaved sluggishly?  Your web browser acting weird or taking you to places you didn’t want to go?  Pop-up Ads annoying you?  There is a very good chance your pc is infected with spyware.  In fact over 90% of the machines I have looked at have been infected by at least one and sometimes dozens of pieces of spyware.  What is spyware?  Spyware (sometimes called adware or malware) is software that can infect your machine without your knowledge when you visit certain web sites, click on certain pop up windows, download music or install software on your system.  Spyware can cause annoying pop-up ads, monitor your keystrokes, collect information on you, slow your system down, and cause your computer to behave oddly.  Sometimes spyware will hijack your web browser so that it takes you to other sites than the ones you wish to go to!

Luckily there are several products that can be used to battle spyware.  I recommend using Ad-Aware available at http://www.lavasoft.de.   They have both a freeware version and a commercial version available.  Another good free product is Spybot Search and Destroy available at http://www.safer-networking.org.   There are other vendors of commercial anti-spyware products including “McAfee antispyware” and “Pest Patrol”. These and others can be found via Google (just search for “spyware”) or http://www.pestpatrol.com/ and http://software.rutgers.edu/.   I recommend running this software weekly on your system and allowing it to clean up your computer.  Also periodically update the data files the anti-spyware software uses, to update its list of known spyware.  Many people run two or more anti-spyware software packages on their systems, (like running both Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy), since sometimes the different software finds and removes different spyware.

II. Viruses and Worms

Besides spyware many machines become infected with viruses, worms and other malicious software.  Virus and Worms are nasty in that they can crash your system, erase your files, and attack other systems on the network.  

Rutgers students, faculty, and staff can freely use Trend Micro anti-virus software at home or at school.  Rutgers has a site license for this effective anti-virus software.   The software can be obtained at http://software.rutgers.edu.  When you setup this software, make sure to have it set to run automatically to detect and remove viruses at least once a week.  Also make sure the software also updates its DAT (virus definition) files weekly.  This is important since new viruses come out all the time, and will only be detected by anti-virus software if you keep its files up to date.  There are some people who setup their systems to run Trend Micro virus scans and update its files every day.  That is fine also and more secure.  The key thing is to install the software and setup the scanning and updating to happen in an automated fashion (according to the schedule you select).

If you wish to use another anti-virus software, like Norton or others, that’s fine as long as you have a legal copy of it and you keep the software and its virus definition files up to date.  Failure to do so will render the anti-virus software useless.

III. Patches

All software on your system including your operating system may have security flaws.  Vendors like Microsoft release patches (sometimes called Service Packs) that need to be installed on your system to close these security holes.

The best way to battle these security holes is to make sure your computer system stays patched.  I recommend setting up your Windows Update to run regularly (daily) and allow it to download and install all critical and security patches.  Windows Update can normally be found under your Start button.  If you can’t find Windows update, you can go manually to Microsoft’s windows update website at http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/default.asp

If you use Microsoft Office, you also need to check separately for patches for this product at:  http://office.microsoft.com/officeupdate/default.aspx

If you are running Windows XP, it is highly recommended that you also install Service Pack 2 via Windows Update.  Once you have Service Pack 2 installed, you will find under Start -> Control -> Panel -> Security Center is the means for you to enable your software firewall (see below), make sure you have anti-virus software running, and also turn on and configure Windows Update to run automatically.

IV. Spam

If you read your email from email servers (name@camden.rutgers.edu), then you already have one level of anti-spam protection in place.  Our spam filters are automatically setup to work on our email servers and all student accounts on clam are automatically subscribed to this service (faculty/staff on crab would need to subscribe to activate this service, if they havent done so already).  The following web page can be used to subscribe to this service or modify your spam filtering settings.  You can also create your own spam filtering rules via this tool.

Students can go to:

http://clam.rutgers.edu/account_tools.html

Faculty/Staff can go to:

http://crab.rutgers.edu/account_tools.html

and then click on “Enable/Disable Spam Filtering”.

Many email software (like the latest version of Mozilla, Eudora, Outlook) comes with built-in spam filtering, and you can use this also as a secondary layer of spam filtering.  Keep in mind in all cases, no matter what spam filtering means you use some spam will find its way past the spam filters.  The hope is to block the majority of spam.

V. Firewalls

There are 2 types of firewalls, hardware-based and software firewalls.  Firewalls help in protecting your system from outside hackers (but they are only one line of defense, all of these others steps listed here still need to be followed).

Software Based Firewalls (more common):

If you are running Windows XP, I would recommend turning on its firewall capabilities.  Under Service Pack 2, you can access the firewall via Start -> Control -> Panel -> Security Center.  Security Center will allow you to manage (turn on) your internal firewall, and also make sure your system is set to do Automatic Updates of system patches and also check that your virus protection is installed.

Otherwise, you may wish to look at commercial software based firewalls, including Zone Alarm and also McAfee Personal Firewall. 

Hardware Based Firewalls:

Some home users will buy a router/switch with firewall capabilities (like from Lynksys or Netgear).  This can be useful if configured properly.  Reading the manuals that come with such a system is vital.

For IT staff on campus who wish to use a hardware firewall to further protect an entire lan, then a firewall from SonicWall or a Cisco Pix would be useful.  Camden Computing Services can give you help and advice in installing such a product.

VI. More Security Info

If you have any questions on these topics please feel free to contact the Camden Computing Services help desk via email at help@camden.rutgers.edu or call (856) 225-6274.