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My brother gets malware infections practically every week. Apparently he had a infection over the past 24 hours, I only noticed it because I checked the router logs and saw a massive amount of network traffic on his MAC address.

How can I limit the damage on the network when this happens? I try to educate him but nothing ever sticks. I even set up auto updates, EMET, antivirus, OpenDNS familyshield and a few other things but he always manages to get infected. I usually just MAC block him or egress the bandwidth to 1kbps when I see a ton of traffic until I can physically check the computer.

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    You answered your own question already: Block access in the router based on his computer's MAC address(es). Perhaps you mean another type of isolation (which?)?
    – Steven Volckaert
    May 1, 2014 at 6:35
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    To prevent other computers from getting infected i would suggest putting him in a DMZ
    – BadSkillz
    May 1, 2014 at 8:20
  • As BadSkilz suggests isolate him with a router between the rest of your internal network and him.
    – zedman9991
    May 1, 2014 at 13:03

1 Answer 1

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If your router has the features you could create a separate vlan and isolate his computer in that using firewall rules. Other than that MAC address filtering is really the only way.

However what I would do is ban him from your network. He won't learn his lesson because he has you providing free tech support whenever he makes a mess. Kick him off for a week, then limit his access to some very basic sites for another week or so. Charge him for tech support. He'll get the message or take his activities elsewhere.

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    +1 He won't learn if he experiences no failure. If you keep fixing it, he'll keep breaking it...
    – schroeder ♦
    May 1, 2014 at 15:58

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