With all the information out there on the Zeus bot and malware like it, we made a decision at home not to use Windows to access any of our online banking sites. Now to be honest, we probably had a head start in that arena as we only run Windows on our Work laptops. The home laptops and desktop all run Linux of one flavor or another. One evening not too long ago we were at my parents’ house and the discussion of these bots and their method of operation came up. I’ll skip the part of the conversation where we discussed how they “protect” themselves now with changing their complex passwords often, etc. The conversation wound up with the question of what to do. Do you discontinue the use of online banking and roll back the convenience clock or do you find a safer way to do these things?
I showed my parents the Ubuntu Live USB key I have in my bag and grabbed my father’s laptop. A live CD (or USB key in this case) allows you to run another operating system without altering the Windows operating system. If you like it, there are menu options that will auto-install Ubuntu on either the whole hard drive or in the free space. That, however, is for another blog article. A few seconds after turning on the laptop with my Live USB key in, we were looking at the Gnome desktop.
My mother was the first to recognize the Firefox icon on the top menu bar and within seconds she was surfing the web with Ubuntu. They decided that this was an easy way to stay safer while using their bank’s web portal. You can download your own live CD from http://www.ubuntulinux.org/getubuntu/download .
One last note before I go. While you are less likely to get “infected” while using Linux, it is not impossible. It’s all a numbers game, once Linux gains more popularity; the bad guys will start writing malware for Linux… Until then, happy computing.
Find further help at our blog posting on Creating an Ubuntu USB Live Drive
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About the Author:
MIke Gargiullo - Senior Security Consultant