Posts tagged ‘security’

Disabling Windows Smart Screen for Downloads

pictureWindows Smart Screen is a security feature of recent releases of Windows. It attempts to alert you to potentially dangerous downloaded software by… well, mostly by creative guessing.

According to Microsoft’s web page that explains Smart Screen, the Smart Screen logic determines if a downloaded application is dangerous by “checking downloaded files against a list of files that are well known and downloaded frequently. If the file isn’t on that list, Microsoft Defender Smart Screen shows a warning, advising caution.”

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Installing an Alchemy Mindworks Trusted Certificate

pictureSoftware that’s distributed over the Internet is traditionally “signed” using a “code signing certificate.” A code signing certificate allows an authority ostensibly worthy of trust to vouch for whoever is distributing the software in question.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

In reality, signing distributed software with a code signing certificate doesn’t do a lot beyond suppressing the scary messages that some web browsers and / or Windows might display when you download or install software. Absent a signing certificate, you might see a message to the effect that the publisher of the software in question could not be verified. There’s an example below.

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Windows Speedup: Disabling Defender’s Real Time Protection

pictureThe Windows Defender application that installs with Windows 10 is an estimable security application, with a rigorously-maintained database of threats. That it costs nothing to use has a lot to be said for it as well. Like most security software, however, it likes to wander into the insanely-paranoid section of the theater from time to time.

Left to its own devices, Windows Defender will avail your computer of a laudable degree of protection from malware and other intrusions by cybercretins. It can also substantially reduce the usefulness of the system it’s running on.

One of the more questionable features of Windows Defender is its real time protection. Real time protection scans every file that arrives on your computer – in real time, as its name implies – to defend you against invading e-mail attachments, venomous downloads and malicious web browser plugins, among many other things.

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Security Issues and Software Vulnerabilities

pictureFrom time to time, Alchemy Mindworks releases software updates to deal with security issues. This sounds a bit scary – with good reason in some cases – and as such, it probably deserves an explanation.

Regrettably, the world includes a substantial number of flakes, idiots and malevolent swamp-dwellers who spend their mean little lives trying to attack the computers of the rest of us. When they’re successful in doing so, they can:

  • Install malware to steal personal information, such as credit card numbers and banking passwords.
  • Connect the afflicted computers to botnets, such that they can be used to attack other networks.
  • Encrypt the files on your hard drive and demand a pile of bitcoins for the key to decrypt them.
  • …and probably a lot of other stuff we’d rather not know about.

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Error Creating the Specified File During Validation

pictureWhile it’s thankfully uncommon, we have encountered instances of the version 6 Alchemy Mindworks software refusing to validate, and displaying a message that says “There has been an error creating the specified file.” We’ve yet to reproduce the beast in house.

Contrary to rumors and innuendo in this matter, this problem does not lie with either frenzied weasels creeping into our offices late at night in search of leftover pizza, or with the depredations and treachery of left-wing politicians… although you can never be entirely certain of the latter.

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The Norton / Symantec WS.Reputation.1 False Positive

pictureSystem security – keeping your computer adequately defended against viruses, malware and other barbarians at the gate – is a complex and oftentimes bedeviling problem. Too little security will find you part of a botnet, or providing your credit card information to every hacker in Afghanistan. Too much security will make your computer excessively paranoid, to the point of your not getting anything useful done with it.

You can render your system wholly impervious to infection by software viruses by the simple expedient of switching it off and leaving it that way – but this is hardly a workable resolution to the issue for most of us.

If you use Norton Antivirus to defend your computer against the machinations of cybercretins, you may have encountered a particularly intractable issue upon installing new software or updates, such as the ones made available for our products. Norton might alert you to a threat it refers to as WS.Reputation.1 when you download the installers in question… and then delete or quarantine your downloads.

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