You definitely need an external harddrive.
I recommend to make an image of a fresh, clean and updated Windows installation, and to keep that as a starting point for a next time.
Also keep images from the last 6 - 8 week before you delete them, just in case.
And definitely keep them when you participate in Beta testing etc.
Greetz, Red.
So did you install ‘CryptoPrevent’ ? ???
My hard drive is 80GB, and I’m currently only using about 20GB of space. The 20GB includes all of the software I wanted to install and personal files. I really try not to store much on the hard drive just in case there is a problem. I also use CCleaner and PrivaZer, and that helps remove things that just waste space. The USB Flash drive I ordered holds 128GB, so the full disk image should fit. Are the backup disk images the exact since of the drive’s capacity or just about the size of what is stored on the drive?
I’ve looked at the CryptoPrevent website (https://www.foolishit.com/cryptoprevent-malware-prevention/), but I have not installed the software yet. I will look more into what the software does to prevent CryptoWall. I try not to have additional applications running all the time, and if there are security settings/changes I can manually make instead of installing the software I’d prefer to make them. Is CryptoPrevent that much better than following the steps mentioned here to manually secure the computer: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/cryptowall-ransomware-information#prevent
I think the best thing to do was to just not install Adobe Flash. Software requiring regular updates because of potential security holes and is a regular target for malicious software attacks is not a good thing to install in the first place. So at the moment, it is pretty much just Windows and IE that have the potential for problems while using the Internet.
Cryptoprevent does not run … It makes policy changes in the registry
CryptoPrevent does not consume resourse in space or CPU.
As essexboy stated it only changes/add Reg Entries.
But hey, your security decision.
edit
I decided to just try out the manual Software Restriction Policies update described here:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/cryptowall-ransomware-information#manual
The only difference I noted was that for Windows 7 you can just go to Administrative Tools->Security Configuration Management instead of typing in Local Security Policy in the Start Menu search.
The steps to add the 8 new rules were very easy. I’m not sure how the changes will impact my system, but we’ll see how things go.
The attached text file shows the elements that cryptoprevent changes
Thanks for posting the file that shows what Cryptoprevent creates rules for.
It looks like the majority of the restrictions are on files that can run/execute (.bat, .cmd, .com, .exe, .js, .jse., .pif, and .scr), are in locations where programs should not be running, or are of files that appear to be named as multimedia/compression/MS Office files but are actual files that can run/execute. There also are restrictions on svchost.exe running in odd locations. And, cipher.exe, lsassvrtdbks.exe, lsassw86s.exe, scsvserv.exe, syskey.exe, and vssadmin.exe are restricted… it looks like all of these except ciphere.exe and vssadmin.exe are malware programs… does Avast already block all of these malware programs?
I’m not sure what this restriction does:
HKLM Group Policy restriction on software: ** <====== ATTENTION
Exactly what I was saying… no more Adobe Flash:
http://www.cnet.com/news/gone-in-a-flash-facebook-says-adobes-plug-in-is-a-security-risk-no-longer-worth-taking/
https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/620306643360706561
Adobe Flash gone from my Windows system for more than two months now:
HTML5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5 No recommendation as to which browser HTML5 player to use.
Adobe may have fixed the current security holes, but who knows how many other, unreported ones there are.
From what I’ve noticed so far, most of the major video websites already use HTML5 video players. There were a few websites I had used that still only use Adobe Flash, so I contacted them and suggested that they drop Adobe Flash and just use HTML5. Hopefully, many more of them drop Adobe Flash.
As far as websites that are fully Adobe Flash-based, they need to have someone redevelop their website so that it doesn’t need any plug-ins, but I know that can be costly depending on the website. But, after they notice an increasing amount of people not being able to use their website because the users do not have Flash installed, they’ll end up have to spend the money on the redevelopment… redeveloping the website now would be a wise investment.
I’m not sure what can be done about the Adobe Flash/Shockwave game websites, but I did see there are some game websites that use HTML5. I’m surprised that any of these websites alternatively suggest installing the Java plug-in to play the games.