Advices to keep your account safe

[Ant4rez]

Hello, i just readed the two step verification post that admins made and i just wanted to make an advise on the same line (i'm not an expert).

Recently i see that attacks related to cookies are very popular, and even you can buy cookies from accounts already hijacked. There are different ways to steal your cookies, but, i would say that the most common are installing cracked software from suspicious sources, not being careful from what you download, and also maybe some direct attack with fake emails, etc. But in the end they are able to save the cookies from your browsers that are encripted, but it's possible to decript it (BLTools) and then they just load into they own browser with 3rd party extensions like a cookie manager, so, they log in into your account without need of password or 2FA, you will not notice any warning on your email, etc. This is because the webpage things that you're the same person even if is a different IP address, having your authenticated cookies will made the page ignore everything, and this is because on how is made the cookies system and also "oauth". I really don't know a 100% way of keeping safe from this kind of attack, but, at least i think i can recommend this countermeasures:

• On Firefox exists and extension called
  You must be registered for see links
  : it "lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple accounts and integrate Mozilla VPN for an extra layer of privacy." This is probably still vulnerable to this kind of sypware, but at least is one more layer of protection, better than nothing. Also maybe the use of another different browser for certain task like banking would be recommended.
• Also i strongly recommend cleaning the browser cookies after X days, for example 15 days. I think there's also a settings on the browser where you can clean automaticlly the cookies after X days or when you close the browser (Yes, cleaning the cookies will make you have to log in every time on the websites).
• And for the least but not less important i would also recommend to use of a password manager like Bitwarden and not saving the passwords on the browser.

Hope this can be useful and i really don't know where to post this, but i would like to have some feedback from yours and maybe other advices.

 

[RedDove]

Thank you so much for this info. @Ant4rex,
I am going to look into everything you've mentioned.
I need to take security more seriously, I guess we all do.
Though I don't have anything important on the PC, I use for the internet,
except for the files I get here but, I transfer them to another PC and external
hard drive very quickly.
Thanks again.

 

[erobbins]

Bank Mode is a feature in Avast Secure Browser and Avast Antivirus that provides a virtual desktop, which acts as a clean, safe PC inside of your PC. The Bank Mode can be turned on and off in the Avast Secure Browser.

There is also an extension to browsers, Ghostery which can be set to prevent cookies as you browse.

 

[Ant4rez]

Thank you so much for this info. @Ant4rex,
I am going to look into everything you've mentioned.
I need to take security more seriously, I guess we all do.
Though I don't have anything important on the PC, I use for the internet,
except for the files I get here but, I transfer them to another PC and external
hard drive very quickly.
Thanks again.

You should be safe if you don't execute the programs, and if they're on a zip, rar, or even 7z, so being compress this most likely should keep it isolated from interacting with your OS, so even if they're infected it should be "safe" keeping it stored. But anyways i would recommend having an antivirus up-to-date and please a good and reputate antivirus. Make periodic scans. And the most efective thing that you can do if you got infected as my experience is having a USB memory where you can boot a WinPE enviorment with antivirus utilities, or having directly a "rescue disk" from companies like

You must be registered for see links

that have a free solution, the file you got, it can be installed either on a DVD or USB with

You must be registered for see links

and make it bootable that will start the system from the USB memory and scan the computer without the malware kwoning (because the malware is loaded into the system but not in the system that you're running from the USB memory). This is the most efective way to remove malware as my experience, because some malware is capable of hidding his behaviour, for example, if you have some kind of malware that is ussing your CPU or Disk to do some tasks in the background but you open the task manager and that's nothing using it. This is most likely a "hidden strategy" from that malware so it can make the user confuse. In this way you will be able to easily found and remove the malware. Also if you have a large USB memory you can make a USB memory with

You must be registered for see links

that allows you to have multiple bootable .ISO files and also store some files, etc.

Some people say that having an antivirus is useless if you know what you do and be careful. But in reality, and my personal experience. Even if are the most knowledge person in cybersecurity, you will know that anyone can be a victim. There're a lot of 0day and unknown vulnerabilites that are possible being exploted from someone or some dark organization to make botnet, or steal user information, install keyloggers. That's why is also important always have Windows up-to-date and the antivirus definitions. In the same line, for the antivirus software and the research, investigation departments on it. It's impossible to have all the threats on their databases, since, everyone can make malware (like older antivirus in early times do, this is called signature method detection, today this also exists but it's most likely just a first layer of security and no the real thing, you shoud maybe notice this of the signatures like when installing a driver, of if you anytime uses a program that smartscreen of windows told you that doesn't have a signature). That's why antivirus uses in most escenarios heuristics analysis, where the antivirus reads and analize the code of the programs, files, etc. in searching of similar behaviours that usually malware do. Like downloading in second plane and installing it without seeing anything in the screen, for example, think about the google chrome setup, can be easily have a behaviour like a malware should do, but companies add them to a trust whitelist.

Bank Mode is a feature in Avast Secure Browser and Avast Antivirus that provides a virtual desktop, which acts as a clean, safe PC inside of your PC. The Bank Mode can be turned on and off in the Avast Secure Browser.

There is also an extension to browsers, Ghostery which can be set to prevent cookies as you browse.

That's a cool feature from Avast. I know the extension Ghostery, but as my understanding you are only blocking cookies for statidistics or tracking porpouses, like the info that will make the ads the things you're looking for to buy in some shopping website and then showing you ads related to dat. But in none case the cookies related to your active sessions on website, as this should break ther funcionallity and in every tab your open or refresh the page should login again in the website into your account if that works on that way.

 

[erobbins]

That's a cool feature from Avast. I know the extension Ghostery, but as my understanding you are only blocking cookies for statidistics or tracking porpouses, like the info that will make the ads the things you're looking for to buy in some shopping website and then showing you ads related to dat. But in none case the cookies related to your active sessions on website, as this should break ther funcionallity and in every tab your open or refresh the page should login again in the website into your account if that works on that way.

Oh darn, did not know that. Glad I found out. There is a program, forgot ther name, it scrambles what is typed. I wonder if that could help stop the bad guys when typing in passwords, etc. Not sure if the same program can prevent intercepting copy and paste (they can hack that also).

I am wondering too if encrypted VMware virtual machines could make things more secure. As in, put another layer between us and them.
E

 

[Ant4rez]

Oh darn, did not know that. Glad I found out. There is a program, forgot ther name, it scrambles what is typed. I wonder if that could help stop the bad guys when typing in passwords, etc. Not sure if the same program can prevent intercepting copy and paste (they can hack that also).

I am wondering too if encrypted VMware virtual machines could make things more secure. As in, put another layer between us and them.
E

I don't think that everything you type should be encrypted, but, at least with a password manager like Bitwarden, when you need to introduce the password the extension do it for it self and it's not a "copy-paste" procedure, it is inject directly on the username and password fields so even if you have a malware that watches your clipboard it would be useless in that scenario, because no data is going through the clipboard, also on windows there is the option to remove the clipboard history, so you only have the info about the last thing you copied and not "everything" on the clipboard.

Virtual machines are a good environment to test malware, in fact there is a website called "

You must be registered for see links

" where you can run a virtual machine with various SO like Windows 10-7 or Linux on their side and control it from the browser, and run malware or the suspicious files you're investigating, this file it's uploaded in first place when you're setting up the envirioment. The website then when you finish the session it will show you a regist from all interactions, modifactions, etc, that were made on the system, also will highlight the operations that you should have on eye on it. But this is also more technicall.

 

[RedDove]

You should be safe if you don't execute the programs, and if they're on a zip, rar, or even 7z, so being compress this most likely should keep it isolated from interacting with your OS, so even if they're infected it should be "safe" keeping it stored. But anyways i would recommend having an antivirus up-to-date and please a good and reputate antivirus. Make periodic scans. And the most efective thing that you can do if you got infected as my experience is having a USB memory where you can boot a WinPE enviorment with antivirus utilities, or having directly a "rescue disk" from companies like

You must be registered for see links

that have a free solution, the file you got, it can be installed either on a DVD or USB with

You must be registered for see links

and make it bootable that will start the system from the USB memory and scan the computer without the malware kwoning (because the malware is loaded into the system but not in the system that you're running from the USB memory). This is the most efective way to remove malware as my experience, because some malware is capable of hidding his behaviour, for example, if you have some kind of malware that is ussing your CPU or Disk to do some tasks in the background but you open the task manager and that's nothing using it. This is most likely a "hidden strategy" from that malware so it can make the user confuse. In this way you will be able to easily found and remove the malware. Also if you have a large USB memory you can make a USB memory with

You must be registered for see links

that allows you to have multiple bootable .ISO files and also store some files, etc.

Wow, thanks for that detail explanation, I really mean that,
for you to take the time to do it, means alot.
I like the USB method you describe, it makes sense and is not complicated.
Thanks again, @Ant4rez, I really appreciate it.

 

[Jimmy Collaros]

You can ignore cookies TeamOs is using cookies but not for bad.
You can ignore cookies in other sites or stop visit them.

 

[RedDove]

You can ignore cookies TeamOs is using cookies but not for bad.
You can ignore cookies in other sites or stop visit them.

Thanks for the info, @Jimmy Collaros.

 

[Ant4rez]

You can ignore cookies TeamOs is using cookies but not for bad.
You can ignore cookies in other sites or stop visit them.

Yeah, in the most sites you will see a warning about the cookies, and you can choose in some other which you would like to use or reject all. But, here we are talking about the cookies that store your sessions, that no are related in any ways with this kind of cookies for advertising, marketing, stadistics porpouses, any website will use cookies to save your sessions and you can't reject that kind of cookies.

 

[Richard_dn]

Passwords can be stolen lot of ways the best way to protect accounts is to alternative email addresses, an Authenticator App, and link to your Phone.