ESET on the Radio

Why Always Connected -- Broadband Connections Need Maximum Protection and What We Can Do To Protect Ourselves and Our Computers

Alan:  If you think that just because you have a broadband cable connection that the only time you need to worry about malware or malicious attacks is when you are surfing the Internet, you'd better think again!  In actuality, because you have a broadband connection, you are always connected to the Internet. 

And to discuss ways that we can protect ourself from malware attacks on our computer system when connected to the Internet, it's our pleasure to have as our guest again, Randy Abrams, Director of Technical Education with ESET.  Welcome back to Let's Talk Computers, Randy.

Randy:  Hi, Alan.  Thanks for having me back.  It's great to be here.

Alan:  Having a cable broadband connection means you are going to have fast Internet, magnitudes faster than dial-up, but having a faster connection, especially having an always connected connection, means that you can be attacked by malware at any
Time – even when you are not sitting down in front of your computer! 

And this is why we need to have multiple layers of anti-malware protection, both at our computer system, using a tried and true solution like ESET Smart Security and also our hardware router or firewall, right after your cable modem.  And if you cable company suggests that you connect their cable modem directly to the back of your computer – don't do this!  This is very bad advice. 

And Randy, as the first line of defense, you really want to have a hardware router or firewall, don't you?

Randy:  Absolutely.  You definitely want to have a router that at least has what we call NAT or network address translation that helps protect your computer.  However, when you use that router, and a lot of people use the wireless access point that has a router built into it, which is fine, but you need to go in and change the default user name and password. 

It only takes a few minutes to learn how to do that.  Look at the owner's manual, pull it out, go through it (it's a quick read and a lot of it might be gobbledygook), but you will see how you set the user name and password and it's critical that you change that default password.  Otherwise people can access your router remotely and change a lot of things that will compromise your network.

Alan:  I mean, if they have access to the inside of the router, they have access to the whole network, don't they?

Randy:  It's actually worse than that.  They can mimic the whole Internet for you, because if they have access to the router, they can change the way that your computer sees the Internet!  It's what we call a "DNS Attack."  And DNS is how your computer and the net translates http://www.mybank.com/ to the numeric address that really represents the Website. 

If I change the Table of Contents in a book, you are not going to find what you're looking for.  But if I can make it look like you have found what you're looking for, you are going to be fooled. 

And so if I can access your router and change the DNS settings, when you type in a Website, I can take you to a completely different Website that looks exactly like the Website you meant to go to.  The difference is now when you enter information like the user name and password, the bad guys have it, instead of the site that you meant to go to.

Alan:  You could actually set up a proxy, you know inside the router so that any surfing of the network goes to their site first and then goes out – which means that they can get all your bank information; they can find out every time that you buy something on eBay.  There's so much that they can do.

Randy:  Right!  And all they really need to do is get you to a Website where they can install a bot and that bot can download all kinds of software and not only capture banking account information, it can capture all of your e-mails; your instant messages; your social network logins.  It's definitely a risk and simply going and changing the default password to something on the router adds a significant level of defense.  And it only takes a couple of minutes.

Alan:  Yes, just don't use a common word or something, put something in there that is both upper and lower case and actually uses symbols.  That makes it even harder, doesn't it?

Randy:  Yes, it definitely does and this is one case where I think it's pretty safe to write down the password.  Save the box that your router came in and store it some place where can find it pretty easily.  This isn't a password that you need to change very often, but make it a good password.  You can write it down on a post-it and stick it right inside of the original box and if you ever need to get to that password, you can just go to the box and open it. 

Some people say, "Well, yeah, but someone could get to that and steal it," but you if they've gotten that far, they've got physical access to router and if they've got physical access to the router, they can reset it.  They can do a factory reset by pushing a button and they still have access. 

So, maybe you don't want to save your password – maybe if you need it again, you'll just do a reset yourself!  But it's important to have a really good password.  You really don't have to worry about remembering that password.  Write it down; save it someplace that not online.  So don't save it on your computer.  You can put it on a sticky note and put it in the owner's manual.  You can put it underneath the router; on top of the router if it's not in plain site, but make sure you've got that good password.

Alan:  And you can turn off the WAN side access, because nobody on the public part of the Internet needs to have access to your router. 

Randy:  Exactly. Unless you have got some expert that's helping you with your network who needs remote administration rights, make sure that the remote administration capability is turned off.  If you do have some one helping you, make sure that remote administrator has a very secure password to be able to access it.

Alan:  If it's a good brand of router, you can actually set it up so that I could WAN Access to one IP address in the public and that's the only one that's going to have WAN Access.

Randy:  Right, there are a variety of different products and solutions with the variety of different levels of sophistication, but pretty much all of them have the ability to make sure that nobody outside gets to go in and modify your router settings.  It's must important to make sure that you understand these things.  It doesn't take a lot to learn it. 

You don't' have to be a computer security expert or a software engineer.  These are some fairly simple settings.  If you're trying to set up your router and don't know what the basic settings are or what it means, you can always e-mail askeset@eset.com and ask me questions about it.  I'm happy to help.  If you've got a local expert, they can walk you through it.  It doesn't take long to learn and it does a lot to improve your security.

Alan:  Now, security is so important, because – can you imagine a key logger getting loose on every workstation in a corporation and what kind of damage that could do?

Randy:  The amount of damage it could actually exceeds my imagination!  I can imagine a lot of things, but the bad guys never seem to run out of ideas!

Alan:  This is a business now.  This is not like, well a hobby or "we're just going to put a virus on the computer for cuties sake, this is a full time business that has got a lot of big bucks behind it.

Randy:  Yeah, the ways that can be attacked are just astounding and they can be everything from simple theft to reputation damage.  If a competitor gets in using malware, they can e-mail your clients and make rude comments; provide false information that looks believable – things that will damage your reputation so that there's lot more to it than, "Well, I don't have any really useful information," because you'd be amazed at how useful some of that information actually is in the wrong hands in the wrong hands! 

Alan:  And you've got malware out there that will actually scramble your data and then ask you for money in order to unscramble it! 

Randy:  Yes, we call that "ransomware".  What they do is they encrypt your data so you can't read it anymore.  And they will ask for money so that you can decrypt the data.  But what happens so that you can decrypt the data.

But what actually happens is you get them the credit card information and rather than letting you decrypt the data, they just steal the credit card information and steal your credit.  They use your credit to buy things. 

Now if you have good backups; if you back up your data regularly, if something gets in like that, that encrypts your data, you're not worried about having to pay someone money, you just do a backup and restore it from backup and you've got your data back.  So backing up is an important part of security.

Alan:  It's a vital part of security.  You've got to make regular backups of your computer system and you have to have quality anti-malware, anti-virus to protect yourself, don't you?

Randy:  Absolutely, but you also have to get education.  You have to keep on top of things – spend at least a little time each week, learning a bit more about the technology, because computers are amazingly powerful tools.  You can't expect it to be like a toaster, because a toaster does basically one thing.  It makes toast! 

However, a computer is a highly versatile tool.  And with any tool you have to understand how to use that tool if you're going to get the most out of it.  I can use a hammer, but I don't have the education to build a house that's going to pass codes. 

So if I want to actually use a hammer very, very effectively, I need to learn more.  Well, your computer is a lot more complex than a hammer and can do all kinds of things and it's really important that you learn a bit more about security if you really want to protect yourself.

Alan:  What are we looking at as far as the cost of ESET Smart Security and ESET NOD32 software? 

Randy:  That can depend how many computers you are buying it for and how long you are buying it.  For one PC a one-year subscription is $59.99.  If you buy a two-year license then its $89.99, which saves you 25%.  There are other discounts like for two PCs; the one-year license is $69.99, where one PC is $59.99.  Again, there is like a 25% discount going with two years. 

For the ESET Smart NOD32, which is just the basic anti-malware; anti-spyware; anti-adware; anti-virus; anti-trojan; anti-rootkit, the malware protection.  The one-year license is $39.99 for one PC.  It's $59.99 for two PCs.  For one PC a two-year license is $58.99. 

You can go to http://www.eset.com/ and look at the products and there is a breakdown.  You can contact ESET if you are a corporation using more than four PCs to find out volume pricing for your corporate needs. 

Alan:  And you have different flavors, that are not just for PCs, don't you?

Randy:  Exactly.  We make protection for not only Windows, but also for MAC.  For a long, long time we've had ESET NOD32 for Linux machines.  We also provide protections for Exchange Servers.

ESET also has mobile malware protection.  We don't currently support the iPhone or the Android, but we cover Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.  If you haven't looked recently at product offering, take a look at http://www.eset.com/.  We've got a nice range of products there.

Alan:  And you also have Trialware.  These are full-featured Trialware.  You don't strip them down and "Try it and if you see that it's taken a virus out then you pay me for it."  These are full-featured Trialware, aren't they?

Randy:  Exactly.  It's the full product with, essentially a 30-day license.  Anything that our regular product can do your demo product can do – because it is our regular product!  And then if at the end of 30 days you decide that you want to purchase a license you don't download new software.  You get the license key and use the same software you downloaded because it's fully functional.  It's just like having a 30-day license so that you can evaluate the software and try it and see if it's what you like.

Alan:  And during those 30 days, you get full updates and sometimes you send out updates daily to make sure that we're protected, don't you?

Randy:  Usually there's at least a few updates a day so it's pretty rare that a day goes by that doesn't have at least one update and generally there's two to four, sometimes more.  It depends on what's happening.  Trial software gets updated just like the regular software because it is the regular software.  It's just a time-limited trial. 

Alan:  You mentioned that education is the key and I know on your Website you have all types of White Papers, talking about viruses and different ways that can infect your computer system and you also have copies of all the transcripts that we have done together. 

Alan:   You mentioned at education is the key.  And I know on your Website you have all types of White Papers, talking about viruses and the different ways that they can infect your computer system.  You also have copies of all of the transcripts that we have done together!

Randy:  These are excellent resources that people can use to educate themselves and learn more.  We also have the blog and just recently I started a series about Adobe Flash, because a lot of people don't understand that Adobe Flash can seriously compromise your privacy.  If you go out to our blog, you can also learn a lot more about a variety of different threats and how to deal with them.

Alan:   And if I want to find out more information, what Website should I visit?

Randy:  Come visit http://www.eset.com/ and also for educational purposes, check out http://www.securingourecity.com/.  This is an effort that that ESET and several companies, private and public are providing to simply provide education. 

When you go to http://www.securingourecity.com/, Website you are not going to get product pitches; there's no link to buy here – it's pure education!

Alan:  Well, Randy, it looks like we've run out of time.  And today on Let's Talk Computers, we looked discussed why having a cable broadband connection can make it even easier for malware to get on to a computer system.  And we talked about the reason you really need a good router firewall as a first line of defense from malware attacks. 

And we also looked at why, if you do not change the settings of your firewall router, right out of the box, to a more secure setting, you are really opening yourself up for Internet Malware Attacks. 

And I look forward to continuing this conversation, when we'll be talking about some of the tools that included with ESET Smart Security, like ESET System Inspector and Malware Scanner that can prevent our computer system from being attacked by malware, next time. 

Randy:  Well, thank you, Alan.  It's been a pleasure to be here today.