24
votes
Can autoplay USB stick spread virus to windows 8 or 10?
The difference in modern version of Windows is that Autoplay is off by default, but it is still available and can be enabled. However, if you do not know the current Autoplay configuration of a ...
- 15.5k
13
votes
Can autoplay USB stick spread virus to windows 8 or 10?
Although you ask specifically about Autoplay, I take your question more generally to be;
Can I trust newer operating systems like Windows 8 or 10 to [protect me when I] insert a USB
stick?
To ...
- 445
13
votes
Can autoplay USB stick spread virus to windows 8 or 10?
Graham Hill's answer is absolutely correct in my opinion!
I just wanted to add, that there are different ways where usb sticks could harm/infect your computer.
Have a look at Bad USB for example.
- 330
9
votes
Should antivirus HTTPS scanning be left on? Is it secure?
~4 sources that will make you think twice about the security of AV TLS decryption:
Antivirus Software Weakens HTTPS Security: Researcher
“It seems strange that it turned into something people ...
- 435
9
votes
Accepted
(ctrl + alt + del) on Windows 8/8.1/10
No, the SAK is still Ctrl+Alt+Del, and it never went anywhere. (It never was a technical requirement for logging in, merely a policy decision.)
On "consumer" versions of Windows, the SAK (Secure ...
- 1,141
7
votes
Accepted
How to avoid local caches when I open encrypted files
Security is hard. While I applaud your attempts to use commonly available programs to increase your security, software that wasn't expressly designed for security often does the little things wrong (...
- 58.8k
6
votes
How to avoid local caches when I open encrypted files
This works as designed, because WinRAR must send a plaintext version of the encrypted file to be processed. It's not a flaw. Lets see why.
You have a password protected rar file
In this point, all ...
- 53.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Should antivirus HTTPS scanning be left on? Is it secure?
If you want to scan HTTPS traffic to find malware, you need to decrypt it. Avast achieves that by installing their own root certificate to locally intercept your web traffic, acting as a man-in-the-...
- 44.6k
5
votes
Why does Chrome tell me this certificate is valid when it can't be verified?
Looks like a reported bug. Someone blogged about it.
- 9,281
5
votes
Can autoplay USB stick spread virus to windows 8 or 10?
In addition to n00b's answer above, I'd like to point out that autoplay is only disabled by default for removable devices. If you can reprogram the controller (think BadUSB), then you can make a flash ...
5
votes
Accepted
There are many ports opened by system on a Windows 8 computer - are the system files modified?
I think this computer is connected to domain environment domain controller should be 2008 R2 or higher version. Therefore these ports are needs to open in client side. Sometimes computer might be ...
- 655
4
votes
Accepted
Bitlocker on a laptop without carrying around recovery key
What kind of attack are you trying to protect yourself from?
Assuming your only concern is that the data on your lost/stolen laptop will not be readable, then it is OK to carry the recovery key with ...
- 186
4
votes
Accepted
Deleted files and their traces
It depends on how you copy them.
If you do a bitwise copy, aka exactly replicating every single bit from one disk to the other, you are copying over "slack space" which is where the recovery tool ...
- 4,727
3
votes
Reinstalled Windows 8. Is the computer vulnerable during the wait for updates?
Short answer - yes it is.
Would I worry about it? No, not really. The chance of it being discovered and exploited within that timeframe is not very high.
However, if you're being targeted ...
- 3,394
3
votes
Why does Chrome tell me this certificate is valid when it can't be verified?
Asterisk: I don't have the answer to the question. I was able to reproduce the OP's scenario and I am just having a stab at what
might be happening.
I started with some basic digging into how ...
- 553
3
votes
EternalBlue exploit doesn't work against windows 8
Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it's safe. You should patch your box.
If you are running an unpatched Windows 8 box, don't expect to be safe.
There's a lot of reasons why it may ...
- 22.6k
3
votes
Accepted
How reliable is the method of overwriting deleted files with large files?
Wear leveling on the SSD will prevent you from completely overwriting existing data, even if the operating system actually tries to put the new file(s) in the same sectors (as the OS sees them) as the ...
- 9,960
2
votes
How to avoid local caches when I open encrypted files
The answer should be obvious. The un-encrypted contents should never be written to disk. It should be stored in memory as long as it is needed. It can be paged memory if it is very large, but that ...
- 21
2
votes
Accepted
How to know when to install a certificate?
Cert is fine.
Cert is fine. (It chains up to good root CA. I checked manually on Win10.)
This certificate is valid ONLY for smtp.gmail.com. (See below.) So if you access by ANY other DNS-Name or IP, ...
- 18k
2
votes
Accepted
EternalBlue exploit doesn't work against windows 8
Eternalblue works fine when smb connection to the victim is established.
However, default Windows 8 and later installation without additional service info:
- anonymous is not allowed to access any ...
- 46
2
votes
Accepted
Does it Matter That Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is Open to Phishing Attacks?
Speaking of new-found powers. :)
It is now clear to me from the (great!) feedback here that I could have expressed this in a more fact-oriented manner, and that this issue does not seem to be as ...
- 185
2
votes
how to protect from LM hash cracking
You can't stop the dumping of the LM Hashes, what you can do is stop generating them, that is what the noLMHash key is for.
After you disabled the generation of the LM hashes you need to change the ...
- 101
2
votes
how to protect from LM hash cracking
The following is purely from memory and I have not checked to be able to provide a reference, but I seem to recall that the NoLMHash registry key prevents generation of LMhashes does not remove them.
...
- 2,953
1
vote
how to protect from LM hash cracking
Windows computers use two forms of hashing: LANMAN and NTLMv2. LANMAN hashes are backward compatible with Windows 95 and Windows 98 systems, and are laughably weak. NTLMv2 hashes are ...
- 34.1k
1
vote
Capture windows cmd prompt execution?
A similar thread was discussed a couple of days ago. Hope it's of help for you. If not let me know. https://superuser.com/questions/1213475/console-window-keeps-popping-up
- 3,270
1
vote
How to set up a secure VirtualBox VM in Windows
The VM is only as secure as the machine it's running on.
The proper setup is a clean install from verified media, and then doing all untrusted, day-to day activity in a VM. And secure business in ...
- 4,823
1
vote
How reliable is the method of overwriting deleted files with large files?
For SSD's supporting hardware encryption, it should be unnecessary to do this. If encryption is enabled, then the drive can be securely erased simply by clearing the encryption keys.
- 935
1
vote
Deleted files and their traces
TL;DR; It depends how you moved it.
If you have never moved the files to Hard Drive B, it won't carry over the traces.
The way the files are stored on a hard drive would leave traces of the file on ...
- 291
1
vote
How to know when to install a certificate?
Certificates bind together:
A domain name, server name or hostname
An organizational identity (i.e. company name) and location
That means an independent third party company which you and Google ...
- 121
1
vote
Powershell opened up, switched to administrator mode and ran scripts all without me touching my computer. How worried should I be?
I know I'm super late to this party, but this question came up for me while I was searching Sec.SE in relation to another situation that I'm dealing with at work. I also think I could provide ...
- 628
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible