More housecleaning

The MVPS HOSTS file, October edition, was made available yesterday. You can get it at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm.

Prior to installing it I recommend a monthly running of Spybot. When you start up Spybot remember to Update, Immunize, and then Search & Destroy. If you have been following my recommendations for a security baseline, then you should see this afterwards:

 

Although it might seem like a waste of time, I find it comforting to see that window once a month. My security baseline is different from most in my profession, but it works, and my system remains clean.

As a review, the reason for running Spybot only once a month, and just before installing the latest MVPS HOSTS file is that a part of Spybot's immunization process is to append thousands of extra lines to your existing HOSTS file. It is my belief that these are redundant and unnecessary as long as you install the MVPS HOSTS file. Remember, your HOSTS file is loaded into memory when you boot your machine, so you want an effective file but not one that is larger than necesary.

Security Firm Warns of Increase in Holiday Themed Malware Attacks

From maximumpc.com

"GFI Software, a security firm specializing in various software for small to medium-sized business, says to be on the lookout for Halloween-themed malware attacks.
The company's dedicated malware research center, GFI Labs, has been busy analyzing data from its ThreatNet monitoring system that retrieves real-time stats from tens of thousands of PCs running VIPRE antivirus software. What they found was an increase in the number of Trojans making the rounds in the days leading up to Halloween compared to last year."

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Monday morning housecleaning

Lately I have tried to develop a routine of doing a little housecleaning on my laptop every Monday morning. I run a selection of tools including CCleaner, Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware or SuperAntispyware (alternating weeks), and Tune-up Utilities (Registry Cleaner, 1-Click Maintenance,  Gain Disk Space, and Configure System Startup).

The only program I have in my system startup list is Microsoft Security Essentials. The reason I look at this every week is that some programs (Adobe Reader & Java) seem to reinsert their update managers in the list on a regular basis. I have MSE set up to run a full scan every night around midnight.

Then, once a month, right after seeing that there is a new MVPS HOSTS file available, I run Spybot S&D and then install the HOSTS file.

It is important to keep all of these programs up to date, so before I run any of them I check for the latest updates just to be sure.