The other day I was helping a family friend move into the dorms at the University of Michigan and set up her very first personal computer. The question came up: What should I do to keep my computer running smoothly and free from unwanted software? All security experts know the answer to this question, but it can be very difficult to articulate when asked by someone who does not share the same intimate knowledge of security threats. This article does its best to explain secure personal computer usage in a way that is simple, memorable, and effective. It is a great starting point for security education in an enterprise or home environment. (more…)

Jon Oberheide from the University of Michigan presented a paper on improving anti-virus (AV) protection (The document is password protected, but Google has a cached version) last Tuesday at the Hot Topics in Security workshop. The basic idea is that you run several signature-based anti-virus programs in parallel as a network service. On top of the signature-based AV protection, the authors used behavioral correlation to further improve coverage. With only one anti-virus program, the best detection rate was only 86.6% (F-Secure), but with 8 anti-virus products and behavioral correlation, the detection rate was over 98%. This article discusses the pros and cons of this new approach to anti-virus protection. (more…)