Most people who read this blog are technology-competent folks who generally never get infected by anything; although, if they do, they know how to deal with. By the same token, we are often called upon by friends and family to serve as free technical support and more often than not, it’s because they clicked on a bad link or executed a program downloaded off the net that installed malware or spyware on the system.
The first complaint you most often hear is “my PC is running slow”, and henceforth hilarity” ensues. You spend hours cleaning out the machine of tons of crapware that that person installed and removing all of those toolbars we love so much that desperately want to “improve our search experience”, etc …
There’s a way though to protect them from themselves!
I was getting tired of cleaning up my wife’s machine every other week when she downloaded a tool or a program that invariably would install some “helpful software” that would generate profligate amounts of popups, so I decided to install Virtualbox for her. It’s a free virtualization tool that lets you deploy a Virtual Machine on a PC. I created a windows image for her that she could power on and take snapshots of at will and taught her how to use it.
We then put in place a simple rule: You want to install a software package you got off the net? Install it in the virtual machine first. Run it. Use it. Check the browsers (Firefox, Explorer, Chrome) to see if behavior has changed and finally run a malware scanner on it (usually MalwareBytes) and see if it finds anything. If, after a few days, nothing new has appeared or no browser takeover has been exhibited, then it’s okay to install on the workstation.
Now, on her own volition, she’s using the VM to do web browsing. Since I told her about the risks of drive-through downloads and browser vulnerabilities, she’s started to browse most websites when she’s searching for something (as opposed to going to known websites) through the VM. In only one case to date did she have to restore from snapshot.
Since then, no malware or spyware infection has occurred for over a year on her desktop.
It’s a little bit of trouble at first, but Virtualbox is very simple and will save you a bunch of grief later. Virtualization isn’t just for IT or software QA departments anymore. This can benefit end-users by giving them a sandbox in which to play with that is much lower risk (and easy to reset).
Leave a Comment