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Security and Privacy Links
Anyone who knows anything about security, knows to
be worried. If your totem is the ostrich, and you're not interested in
being worried, ignore this page!
Just move on to the next link and forget you ever saw this.
Those of us who want to protect our systems from
felonious intrusions, will find here links to sites with articles
and tools on how to do just that.
The good news is that there are tools to protect yourself, your
system and your data from unscrupulous visitors. I'll be updating this page fairly frequently,
so be sure to drop by regularly.
"Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
Tools
- http://www.grc.com
- First thing to do, of course, is check how vulnerable you are.
Gibson Research, run by Steve Gibson, provides us with a number of great tools; among them
the terrific (and FREE) ShieldsUp! service
(yes, this is your first stop), and the SocketToMe and
LeakTest utilities.
- http://www.zonealarm.com
- ZoneAlarm 3.0 is considered by many to be the best free
firewall around. This will not only keep intruders out, but also keep your data in:
if any software on your system tries to communicate with the outside world, ZoneAlarm
will notify you, ask whether to block it, let it go this time, or let it go always. If you
do nothing else, install ZoneAlarm.
- http://www.lavasoft.com
- Publishers of the very bodacious (FREE) Ad-Aware
utility. This utility checks your harddrive and registry for spyware.
Don't boot up without it!
- http://www.cisecurity.org
- Center for Internet Security. They have a set of security
benchmarks, and tools to test for compliance to that benchmark, for Win2K and Solaris.
Other OS benchmarks and tools are in development.
- http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com
- Keep your Windows OS up to date. As new vulnerabilities
are exposed, Microsoft releases patches which you can automatically incorporate into your
system by going to this website. Be warned, however, some of their patches actually
break functionality: as it turns out, Microsoft doesn't always do such a bang up job
of testing their changes. So it may be advisable to wait and see whether anyone has
problems with the latest patch.
- http://www.insecure.org/
- Home of the free, open source Nmap (Network Mapper) tool,
recently immortalized in The Matrix Reloaded. As well as the 2003 Top 75 Security Tools Survey;
a comprehensive listing of tools with a dizzying array of possibilities for network protection and
intrusion. Not for the faint of heart.
Information
- http://www.incidents.org
- Breaking security news.
- http://www.sans.org
- Great repository of articles on security.
- http://www.practicallynetworked.com
- The best place for reviews of home networking hardware. Read
the reviews before you buy your router.
Privacy
- http://www.epic.org
- The Electronic Privacy Information Center is de rigueur if you
intend to protect your privacy and your right to that privacy. It's also a great place to
find out what Big Brother is planning.
- http://www.eff.org
- Founded by Lotus' Mitch Kapor and The Grateful Dead's lyricist,
John Perry Barlow, the Electronic Frontier Foundation was created to protect civil liberties
in cyberspace. They've successfully sued the US government over many of the highest profile
cases, and these have radically changed the way Americans, and American government, view rights
in cyberspace.
- http://www.efc.ca
- Electronic Frontier Canada (EFC) was founded to ensure that the
principles embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms remain protected as new
computing, communications, and information technologies are introduced into Canadian society.
The EFC frequently partners with the EFF on various cases.
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