Category Archives: Glossary

Don’t know what all that computer gibberish used in this blog means? read and find out.

Computer Basics – What is an “Operating System”?

Glossary, Technical Tips

A while back I covered, in a series of articles,  the vast majority of the computer components, as far as hardware (the physical components of a computer) is concerned. So now, to understand Operating  System, let’s talk about software.

Computer software is, simply put, a program. And what is a program? A sequence of commands for the computer to execute (carry out), normally contained in a file. That’s all it is. So whether it’s a word processing program, a video player, or an operating system, it all falls under the category of software.

Now, an operating system is a special kind of software, because it acts as the middleman between the hardware and all the other software. You could say it goes

Hardware –> Operating System –> All other software –> User

When you install, run, uninstall a program, all these tasks are possible thanks to the operating system. So you can see why the operating system can be called a kind of platform.

The above is the most basic explanation for what an operating system is. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, and hopefully I’ve succeeded. Most importantly, I hope I didn’t put anybody to sleep! 🙂

Trojan, Trojan Horse

Glossary

Trojan horses are a specific type of malware (malicious software) that, similar to the  the Greek story of Troy, allow for intrusion of a system from within, opening the door to external control of your computer by a remote intruder. As of late 2014, 78% of malware are Trojans.

Computer Basics – The Two Basic and Most Commonly Misunderstood Computer Terms

Glossary, Technical Tips

The first one is “byte”. We’ve all seen it. “Transmission speed: 500 Kilobytes per second”. “Storage capacity: 500 Gigabytes”. Or perhaps “Oh yeah? Mega-byte me!” 🙂

So what is a byte, in terms of computers and telecommunications? The simplest answer: A unit of information. It consists of 8 of the most basic units of information: The bit. Why 8 and not 7 or 9? That’s irrelevant to the scope of this article, so we’ll leave that at that.

OK So what the hell is a bit then? the term is a contraction of BInary digiT. Or maybe Binary digIT. Anyways, “binary” refers to the numerical system, based on 2 and only 2 possible values: 0 and 1, or false and true, yes and no, on and off, positive and negative, yin and yang… you get the idea. “Digit” is a symbol that represents a number. 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 are, in current Western culture, the ten digits.

So a bit can only have two possible values: 0 or 1. That sort of explains the idea that computers can only think in terms of numbers. And only two numbers at that. No matter what you see your computer doing, whether you are composing an email, watching a video, reading this, all the computer is doing is thinking “0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1” and so forth.

Getting a headache from so much significance? For a graphic representation of a bit, watch the movie TRON. Or, for fast forwarding to the good part, watch this video clip of the TRON scene where the bit is introduced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fGujzulsas

Have fun!

Fake Defragmenters

Computer Security, Glossary

A relatively new addition to the family of fake malware, fake defragmenters pretend to handle file fragmentation in your hard disk drive, while actually just infecting your computer. Because of their Modus Operandi, they could loosely be classified as ransomware. But what’s new about these is the fact that they don’t pretend to clean your computer from viruses like the fake antivirus programs. Instead, they pretend to optimize system performance.

Depending on the specific type that might have infected your computer, if might exhibit ransomware-like behavior because it might pretend, at the end of the “optimization” that the only way to handle the errors found is to purchase the full version of the program, and will not allow access to your data until you do so.

If it doesn’t behave like ransomware, it at least behaves like scareware, i.e. it will keep popping up messages to the effect that problems found will not be resolved until full version of the program is paid for, and it will tell you your computer is at risk, but it doesn’t particularly hold the data in your computer ransom. It just gets in the way of the normal operation of the computer, and in many cases, it might disable your installed antivirus program, to prevent eradication.

The preferred method of infection used by these fake defragmenters is through malicious websites that will attempt to infect your computer as soon as you access them.

A good, up-to-date antivirus should be able to detect and prevent infection from the relatively recent ones. It’s the really recent ones that might get your computer, which will always be the case with the most recent pieces of malware: antivirus programs that depend on signature files (virus definition files) will always be at risk to miss the most recent infections. This is why, once again, a good security system contains several layers, as explained here.

Be aware of which legit programs are installed in your computer, so you can easily identify a rogue/fake program that is trying to fool you into helping it further infect your computer. And ask an expert if in doubt.

More Vulnerabilities in Windows Computers

Computer Security, Glossary

Last week’s article was about a vulnerability affecting Windows computers running on Windows XP, Vista, and yes, 7 as well. That was, however, the tip of the iceberg of a broader and more general flaw in Windows that predicts more zero-day exploits will be coming from that direction in the near future. The specifics on this are a little over the level of the average user, so I will try to break it down to its simplest possible form while recommending remedies.

First, a definition. The vulnerabilities referred to above are related to Windows PowerShell. Windows WHAT? PowerShell. Shell: The simplest way to communicate this is the command prompt window you sometimes might have seen. You can invoke it by going Start, Run, type “cmd” and press enter. You’ll see a black window with a prompt, problably something like c:\windows\system32>_ or perhaps c:\users\username>_ . That would be an example of a shell. If you know how to, you can enter commands the computer will understand and execute, providing you know the correct syntax.

Ok so PowerShell has been around since 2006. More about why is it called POWERshell below. But the important thing is, the second release of it (version 2.0) was released in Aug 2009. And THAT is the version currently being exploited in the wild.

One thing you need to be aware of: PowerShell is, as its name indicates, very powerful. For that reason many security measures were put in place to limit its improper use. Unfortunately, those measures fell short and now we are starting to experiences the consequences of it.

What to do? The passive way to go about this is to wait for Windows to release patches as the specifics vulnerabilities involving PowerShell are discovered. For the more proactive users, there’s a remedy that resolves the issue even before resorting to patches. In an article written about a year ago on what is the best security model for a Windows computer, I mentioned a specific program designed to avoid unauthorized execution of programs. That model is still valid and the program is AppGuard by Blue Ridge Networks. Computers protected by AppGuard are immune to the particular family of zero-day exploits covered here, and more. No other product that I’m aware of provides such protection. To understand fully why you’ll have to read that article.

WiDi – What is it? What Can I do With it?

Glossary, Technical Tips

While recently working on setting up a laptop to be connected to a home theater system, I realized I haven’t talked about WiDi. WiDi = Wireless Display, a new technology that allows high definition content to be transmitted wirelessly between a computer (usually a laptop) and a high definition TV.

That means you can use the TV as an external monitor and play movies from the laptop, play music through your home theater system,  show picture galleries, or simply browse the internet in your laptop and display it on your high Definition TV. Of course that also means being able to stream movies from services such as Netflix from your laptop to your high definition TV, wirelessly.

This new technology is available only in the newest generation laptops, with the newest CPUs from Intel (the i3, i5 or i7 family), and Windows 7, 64-bit operating system. It requires a receiver that attaches to the High Definition TV.

Even if you don’t plan to have such setup, at least now you know what WiDi means 🙂

Choosing the Best Internet Connection Service

Glossary, Technical Tips

With the increase in computers’ processing speed, amount of memory, data transfer speed in hard disk drives etc., the Internet connection speed needs to be kept up as well. Remember, your computer is as fast as its slowest component. Gone should be the days of dial-up speed… and where thousands of data units were transmitted per second, millions are now.

There are several lines one can use to connect to the Internet. From slowest to fastest, they can be broken down into the following:

Dial-up: The oldest and now slowest connection type, it travels through the telephone lines in the voice band. The fastest ones currently would allow your computer to receive a big sized picture in about 4 minutes.

DSL: Stands for Digital Subscriber Line. Similar to dial-up in that it uses the telephone lines, it differs in that it can allow for data transmission WHILE the phone line is being used for voice transmission. The reason for this is that it uses a higher frequency for data transmission than the human voice band (dial-up uses the voice band) and thus voice and data transmission can coexist on the same line. It of course also differs in that it is much faster than dial-up. DSL speeds vary greatly, but let’s just say that the same picture used in the example above would take around 24 seconds in the low end of DSL transmission speed, and little over a second on the high end.

Satellite: Comparable in speed with DSL, Satellite Internet service is an alternative to dial-up in rural and remote areas where other high-speed connection lines don’t exist. Due to disadvantages such as cost of equipment, signal problems due to bad weather, Fair Access Policies on the amount of data that can be accessed per day some of the providers have (like Earthlink’s Satellite service), I don’t recommend this option where other high-speed services exist.

Cable: It uses the cable TV infrastructure to connect your computer to the Internet. Speed wise it would roughly transmit our sample picture in about 6 seconds for the low end, and half a second on the high end.

FiOS: Stands for Fiber Optic Service. A relatively new option, it offers connectivity through optical fiber (a glass or plastic type fiber that uses light instead of electricity for data transmission).   On the higher end, you could receive 6 sample pictures, of the same size as used in the above examples, in about a second. This service however is not available in all areas. As of this writing, only Verizon offers it.

So the above is the basic data on the subject. Of course cost has not been entered into the equation here so up to you to find the best speed for the buck. Sometimes the Internet connection service is bundled with other services, such as phone and TV, which makes it more attractive, price-wise. Also most of these services have more than one tier, i.e. a company will offer a basic DSL package that goes at a certain speed, and then a premium package that is twice as fast or even more.

What is the ideal speed for you? It depends largely on your use of the Internet. Basic emailing and websites browsing don’t need great speed, while video conferencing or big downloads will need something considerable faster. Also remember that if there are several computers at your place connected to the same line, the speed to your computer will be slower if someone else is using the line simultaneously. So take that into account as well.