My OperaSecunia PSI
Sunday, June 12, 2011 5:22:07 PM
Hello out there. Miracles happen, here is a new blog entry, YAY:yes: !
This time I want to promote an awesome program that helps keeping your software on a windows machine up to date: Secunia PSI 2.0.
Secunia PSI (PSI stands for Personal Software Inspector) is a tool by the security company Secunia that runs in the background and checks most of the programs on your system on a regular basis for updates. It does that by comparing your program versions with a database on Secunias servers. If a newer version seems to be available, two things are possible:
The program offers also some detailed information and additional options for every listed program.
I guess that's all you need to know about it ^_^.
I strongly recommend the installation (here's the official promo-video/installation guide), since I think most successful attacks on PCs usually succeed due to either user-fault or 3rd-party software vulnerabilities (In fact, Java seems to be the no. 1 target for manipulated websites nowadays). Since it's difficult to teach every user a good behavior, at least these vulnerabilities need to be fixed as soon as a fix is available, to reduce the chance of success for malicious software or hackers. This tool provides a very neat way to take care of this task:up: .
"But what about virus scanners? Ain't having one good enough!?
" - "No!"
Wait let me rephrase that: " NOOOOO!!!! It is ABSOLUTELY not good enough!. I'm not the uber-expert on this topic, but just considering the sheer amount of viruses coming out each day, it is impossible for the anti-virus companies to have up-to-date signatures for each virus available in time (even though they probably do a good job there). Furthermore, virus scanners cannot necessarily detect attacks, that don't follow normal virus patterns, for example by hackers.
"But there's no important data on my PC. Who would want to break into it? " - "Every criminal that can and knows what to do with it ." This includes using your PC as part of a so called Bot-network to send out Spam e-mails, carrying out attacks on some other PCs or servers, or simply stealing your login information to online banking, e-mail accounts (to send SPAM out in your name...) and so on...
So, that's good enough for now. Enjoy ^_^!
This time I want to promote an awesome program that helps keeping your software on a windows machine up to date: Secunia PSI 2.0.
Secunia PSI (PSI stands for Personal Software Inspector) is a tool by the security company Secunia that runs in the background and checks most of the programs on your system on a regular basis for updates. It does that by comparing your program versions with a database on Secunias servers. If a newer version seems to be available, two things are possible:
- The program offers an automated updating process. This means that it downloads and starts the update on its own. A good example for that feature would be Adobe Flash or AIR, or the Java runtime environment.
- The PSI doesn't offer the automated update process, but provides a link to the download page of the newest version.
The program offers also some detailed information and additional options for every listed program.
I guess that's all you need to know about it ^_^.
I strongly recommend the installation (here's the official promo-video/installation guide), since I think most successful attacks on PCs usually succeed due to either user-fault or 3rd-party software vulnerabilities (In fact, Java seems to be the no. 1 target for manipulated websites nowadays). Since it's difficult to teach every user a good behavior, at least these vulnerabilities need to be fixed as soon as a fix is available, to reduce the chance of success for malicious software or hackers. This tool provides a very neat way to take care of this task:up: .
"But what about virus scanners? Ain't having one good enough!?
" - "No!" Wait let me rephrase that: "
NOOOOO!!!! It is ABSOLUTELY not good enough!. I'm not the uber-expert on this topic, but just considering the sheer amount of viruses coming out each day, it is impossible for the anti-virus companies to have up-to-date signatures for each virus available in time (even though they probably do a good job there). Furthermore, virus scanners cannot necessarily detect attacks, that don't follow normal virus patterns, for example by hackers."But there's no important data on my PC. Who would want to break into it?
" - "Every criminal that can and knows what to do with it ." This includes using your PC as part of a so called Bot-network to send out Spam e-mails, carrying out attacks on some other PCs or servers, or simply stealing your login information to online banking, e-mail accounts (to send SPAM out in your name...) and so on...So, that's good enough for now. Enjoy ^_^!
