Free Security Tools

Hi,

Not sure if this belongs here or in the "newbie security questions"

There is a free for private use product called WinPatrol, from BillP Studios

http://www.winpatrol.com

Version 6.0 Has just been released and is available from the website .

I think that although this is really a "for the masses" app, as it is very User friendly, masses more masses might benefit from it. I also suggest that the social engineering is quite good for very young kids. Might make them a bit more inquisitive/aware of security issues?

The new release includes monitoring "IE Helpers" or BHOs as we might prefer to call them? It warns you if these are being downloaded to your machine, unlike BHO Cop, which you have to run manually...........or at least with my version you do :)

I like WinPatrol, for non-security aware types because of its non-technical approach..........I have not tried the pro version yet.

It monitors:

Startup Programs
BHOs
Windows Task Scheduler
Active Processes
Cookies
Restart File Changes
Changes to the IE Home and Search Pages.

I think that is pretty good for "free"

I know that many may think that "I know of better tools than that"...........sure, and I bet you also know several people who would be a lot safer if they ran this?

It works on WIN 9x to XP

Hope this helps someone....................remember, free for private use :D

Cheers

[offtopic]

...somebody needs to find some newbie linux security tools. Or make a list of the good ones.

Hi [WebCarnage],

More "different angle" than "off topic"? So many people are booting multiple OSes these days that I think the traditional "us & them" distinctions are rapidly vanishing. Anyway, I doesn't make sense to have a secure Windows partition when your *nix ones are wide open or vice versa :confused:

People might like to have a look at http://www.bitdefender.com I think that they do a linux version of their free for private use AV?

Cheers

Hello Nihil

I downloaded winpatrol and have found it good to look around and see what is going on. I am a late starter in computers(I am studying at the moment) and try to read and learn without asking stupid questions but one has to arise. I was looking at the active programs and there was wmiexe.exe running. I have done a google search only to find conflicting attitudes towards this program some say it is needed others say to delete it and the dll which makes start up take so long. There even seems to be conflicting reports about what this thing does.
To delete or not delete that is the question?
Many thanks

Quote:

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Originally posted here by [WebCarnage]
[offtopic]

...somebody needs to find some newbie linux security tools. Or make a list of the good ones.

---

Insecure.org has already done this, but for *nix and m$.
http://www.insecure.org/tools.html

knoppix-std also has a nice list of the tools they offer here. Of course, you can get these tools all separately... but since this distro is security oriented... I'd def look into what they include.

http://www.knoppix-std.org/tools.html

There are a couple that I have not seen on these lists though... :(

http://www.tigersecurity.org/ is pretty cool too.

Way too many to go over, but there are quite a few more that aren't even listed on those lists. If they are not listed on those lists... there are most likely other tools on the list that will do the job.

Hi MrDosky,

Sorry for the delay in responding and welcome to AO. You ask an interesting question, which might appear slightly off topic, but actually is not!

There are a number of tools out there, some are "free", others not. Most of them are genuine, and quite well written. The problem is that they just give you information about what is happening on your machine, and no advice about what to do as a result?

Actually, much of the software used by professionals is the same.............the User is expected to know what to do in their own environment.

Your question is along the lines of "tweaking" rather than security; but I hold the view that if you are running something that you don't use, you are potentially creating a security compromise, and at best are wasting resource?

I am not sure what wmiexe.exe does, but I have been running WIN Me/98 boxes without it for some time. As this is older kit, and not so powerful, I tend to get rid of things like "pchealth" and "fastfind" as they don't really do anything for ME. Yes, you have to be very selfish, and decide what you use your PC for.

I do not have the link to hand, but there is some interesting freeware called Xen, which must be around version 1.87 or 1.96 by now. This is a windows "tweaking package", and does a lot of things for you, with explanations. Be sure to get the manual, as I hope you will find it interesting :)

I am afraid that you will have to google search for it, to find a download site convenient for you.

If you run it................keep the fonts (say "no")

To return to your question, if you remove PC health, and findfast, things like wmiexe.exe will disappear. You might also consider disabling auto-updates in any software you have that uses that?.............I prefer to do it manually, as then I can turn off anything that might conflict FIRST..............they usually get started then ask you to do this? :(

I hope this might have helped a little


Cheers,

Johnno

hello everyone
im owndering what are good sites to compare antiviruses and sucurity software ,i.e. firewalls intrusion decection ,ect ,im learning at this point and would like couple of good starting points to give me the opprutunity to obtain broad knowledge on the sucurity of my computers and network ,thank you for your time

Welcome to AO romanticcowboy, I would first like to recommend that you make posts like this brand new, not adding it onto a really old thread, if you utilize the search function on both www.google.com and here on ao you will find all kinds of people that have used multiple different types of AV, firewall, and IDS. I mean thats a main part of what this site is all about. So check em out and again welcome