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Only an anti-virus can be trusted

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Friday, November 4, 2016

Edward Snowden’s bold revelations and the feeble attempts being made on the Internet by many governments to rein in anarchy (or, is it freedom?—but, let’s not argue which) have led to an increased interest in secure protocols, protected data storages, and the use of Tor for data transfers.

Of course, all these measures improve data-transfer security and help keep traffic safe from criminals' attention. This is an advantage. But, there's a downside, too.

We won't discuss the fact that a malicious file on the user's end can undo all security measures. There’s something else to consider. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase which can be translated as "Who will guard the guards?".

Research conducted from February 21 to April 24, 2016, revealed the existence of at least 110 snooping relays (mostly located in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands).

In most cases, malicious nodes automatically sent queries to a visited server. They requested an Apache update status and tried to discover and exploit any SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and Ruby on Rails and PHP loopholes present. They also attempted to carry out directory traversal attacks.

https://www.securityweek2016.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Group_securityweek2016/pets2016/10_honions-sanatinia.pdf

http://www.securitylab.ru/news/483200.php

Tor is maintained by volunteers who host the network's relays on their machines. But shadows aren't visible in the dark. Who can guarantee that a relay is maintained by an advocate of freedom rather than by a criminal after easy money or by an intelligence agent? And this is not the only risk.

Using cryptography for data transfers means that the traffic won't be scanned by an anti-virus. If it can't receive data for analysis, the anti-virus won't be able to do anything. A tempting target for those who are after your data, passwords or money!

#traffic_scan #encryption #security #site #anonymity #personal_data

The Anti-virus Times recommends

While striving to maintain your privacy, always remember that criminals of all sorts will try to take advantage of the measures you adopt. They will offer you anti-viruses that seemingly consume no resources, cracks and copies of software that require no activation, distributions of remote administration software containing Trojan horses. If you are after freebies, the world is full of them.

"On some computers, when you start the program for the first time, you may see a warning from your anti-virus. Don’t pay any attention to it. The file contains neither malware nor other components, such as toolbars, that install themselves covertly".

"Something weird happened to my Internet. My friends told me that I should delete the contents of the hosts file. So I did, but when I tried to surf the web, I saw a message instructing me to download a program, run it with administrator permissions, and restart the system. It was supposed to fix the problem. My anti-virus may display a warning, but I’m supposed to disregard it. The software is supposed to be Trojan-free. )

I followed the instructions, but … well, I don't know the password (
What can I do??? Please, help!”

You've heard this before?

Because criminals are constantly uploading compromised distributions of popular applications onto various sites, including software stores, you must absolutely use an anti-virus when searching for, downloading, and installing freebies!

All compatibility issues between an anti-virus and other software are resolved in the shortest time possible. That's why instructions telling you to disregard your anti-virus's warnings should make you suspicious. Send the file in question to the anti-virus laboratory BEFORE you install it.

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