How To Prevent ARP Spoofing

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,

but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

-Abraham Lincoln

What is ARP spoofing, and why do I care? If you’re old enough, […]

What is a Security Sandbox?

What is a security sandbox? Think about the type of sandbox that kids play in. It is small, safe environment where kids can play with just the toys in the sandbox, and they’re temporarily contained so that they can’t touch anything outside the sandbox (unless they leave the sandbox).

In computer security, there is […]

Virtual Machines Aren’t Perfect Sandboxes

A few months ago, I had a problem with one of my Virtual Machines (VMs), so I fired up Wireshark, and started capturing traffic. At first I thought I was seeing things. There was a bunch of traffic that was not originating on the VM; it was originating on the host OS. That seemed mighty […]

Disable Proxy Autodetection

Yesterday, I was wondering why my PC was getting logs of these NetBOIS Name queries to WPAD:

Turns out that WPAD is one of Internet Explorer’s worst features. It’s just one of those stupid little things that may be turned on by default that leaves your PC open to hackers.

What can you do […]

Keep This in Mind When Downloading Software

Software is a fact of modern life, but not all of it is safe to use. The real problem is that there is no way for us to tell if a program is good or not. There is no software vetting process, no “seal of approval” that our programs are good, so all we can […]

How To Protect Your Quicken Data from All Your Programs

By now, I hope you’re aware that all of your programs can access your Quicken data. If you don’t care if your data is lost, destroyed, stolen, or published on the Internet, then you don’t have anything to worry about. For the rest of us, it’s an issue that needs to be addressed immediately. Here’s […]

Your Mac is Not Immune to Hacking

My wife and daughter use Macs, so I need to be at least somewhat aware of Mac security. The general consensus is that Mac security is better than Microsoft… but that’s a pretty low bar. How vulnerable are Macs?

I’m tired of hearing from Mac people how secure Mac OS X is. Apparently, I’m not […]

How to Protect Yourself from Hacking Attacks

Hacking attacks happen all the time and pose a real security threat. Here are ten things you can do to protect yourself:

1) Don’t use the same password for all of your user accounts. Choose a variety of passwords, and make each one strong (no full words, use both numbers and letters). Keep your list […]

How to Implement Security Sandboxes

You may not know it, but ALL your programs can access your Quicken data. Not good. So, what can you do?

One solution to this nasty problem is to run all programs in a security sandbox. Unfortunately, the sandboxes in Windows 8 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) are voluntary. Programmers can choose to […]

All Your Programs Can Access Your Quicken Data

Note: The issue discussed on this page affects you if you use Windows or Mac OS X, unless you have taken the following precautions:

For Windows: You are running Windows 8 or later, and only purchase and run programs from the Windows App store. For Mac OS X: You are running Mountain Lion (10.8) or […]