Categories
Computer Security Computers Terminal

Family Computer Security

I recently came home for Christmas to visit family. From time to time I will help them out with computer advice. I say advice because it is free and can be subject to interpretation and I can be totally wrong sometimes. So, if in this post, you have suggestions or advice yourself, please don’t hesitate to correct me with comments and such.
We visited relatives and they had several connectivity issues for internet. We hooked up the router to their modem and secured the wireless and then ran powerline plugs to the basement and hooked up the second wireless router for their WII and XBox360 and whatever other Gaming systems had internet connectivity. One thing I found interesting was the different security protocols and compatibility issues. It seems the older wireless cards did not even detect the new WPA2 wireless protocol. When that protocol was active, SSID seemed to disappear for the older 11/B wireless card.
I then proceeded to download updates for the antivirus on the laptop. The connections was very slow. I then noticed some strange behavior with the system. I finally determined there were viruses present on the machine. I ran a scan and no viruses were detected. I figured this was due to the anti-virus being installed after the viruses were already present. I then decided to run a linux live CD with antivirus capabilities to remove them. I chose Trinity Rescue Kit 3.3. It worked like a charm. I loaded the live CD and then mounted the internal hard drive. I updated the virus definitions of ClamAV and ran it on the internal HD removing all infected files. The power of linux and the command line really was super handy and this all ran within an hour on 256 mb of ram is what amazed me.