4 ms·

> The best AV is: - keep everything up to date - uninstall flash, java, silverlight - don't open random junk - use homebrew/homebrew cask to install stuff Inde

by Decade 10y ago

> The best AV is: - keep everything up to date - uninstall flash, java, silverlight - don't open random junk - use homebrew/homebrew cask to install stuff Indefensible. Just browsing a web page is “open random junk.” Ad networks bring malware to mainstream web sites; Adblock is now a major line of defense. You could wallow in despair, or you could use QubesOS. Which, infuriatingly, does not include IPv6 yet.

reacweb 10y ago
IMHO, the best AV for windows is: start a fresh VM at each boot and discard it at shutdown. If your shared folders contains only harmless data, you have almost nothing to fear.
- kmch 10y ago
  You don't have to discard it each time. You can just have it revert to a snapshot whenever the VM is rebooted.
lmm 10y ago
Web browsers are at least somewhat sandboxed - they have to be. (I'm not sure about adblock - it blocks some threats in an ad-hoc way, but it might add an exploitation vector of its own). QubesOS is only a little bit more sandboxed than a web page; it's relying on Xen (which has a poor security track record) and mostly still using commodity OSes written in C for the insides (though there is some hope e.g. http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2016/01/01/a-unikernel-firewall-for-qubesos/ http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2016/01/01/a-unikernel-firewal... ), so at the moment even running Qubes you're still almost certainly vulnerable in all sorts of places. I agree that something like qubes (that is to say, an OS formed of a number of strictly isolated modules with a small well-defined API between them) is the path to genuine security, but we'll have to at a minimum replace the Xen layer with something proven correct before we can claim to have a genuinely secure system.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Xen has poor security track record compared to which VM or sandbox?
  - lmm 10y ago
    Poor in absolute terms. I don't know that there's a better alternative, but Xen has vulnerabilities frequently enough that at any given time the version you are running is probably vulnerable.
unethical_ban 10y ago
Use a web proxy to block ads and malware sites.

by Decade 10y ago

reacweb 10y ago

IMHO, the best AV for windows is: start a fresh VM at each boot and discard it at shutdown. If your shared folders contains only harmless data, you have almost nothing to fear.

kmch 10y ago
You don't have to discard it each time. You can just have it revert to a snapshot whenever the VM is rebooted.

lmm 10y ago

Web browsers are at least somewhat sandboxed - they have to be. (I'm not sure about adblock - it blocks some threats in an ad-hoc way, but it might add an exploitation vector of its own). QubesOS is only a little bit more sandboxed than a web page; it's relying on Xen (which has a poor security track record) and mostly still using commodity OSes written in C for the insides (though there is some hope e.g. http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2016/01/01/a-unikernel-firewall-for-qubesos/ http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2016/01/01/a-unikernel-firewal... ), so at the moment even running Qubes you're still almost certainly vulnerable in all sorts of places. I agree that something like qubes (that is to say, an OS formed of a number of strictly isolated modules with a small well-defined API between them) is the path to genuine security, but we'll have to at a minimum replace the Xen layer with something proven correct before we can claim to have a genuinely secure system.

AstralStorm 10y ago
Xen has poor security track record compared to which VM or sandbox?
- lmm 10y ago
  Poor in absolute terms. I don't know that there's a better alternative, but Xen has vulnerabilities frequently enough that at any given time the version you are running is probably vulnerable.

unethical_ban 10y ago

Use a web proxy to block ads and malware sites.