Practical Malware Prevention

Copyright © 2015 Michael L. Kelley Jr. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

For my daughter, Harper. I love you.

I miss you, but the memories are easy to find. I love you Gram.

Contents

Preface: 8

Chapter 1: Virus, Worm, Trojan 10

Chapter 2: Back It On Up 22

Chapter 3: Autoruns 28

Chapter 4: Temporary File Cleansing 35

Chapter 5: Malware Really Bites! 40

Chapter 6: Rootkits 45

Chapter 7: Web Browsers 48

Chapter 8: Defragging 52

Chapter 9: Updates 56

Chapter 10: Software Routine 60

Chapter 11: Service Config 65

Chapter 12: File Extensions 68

Chapter 13: Keyboard Shortcuts 76

Chapter 14: Command Line 90

Chapter 15: Port List 94

Chapter 16: Passwords 98

Chapter 17: Software/Links 103

Chapter 18: Afterward 121

About the Author

Michael Kelley Jr. lives in Southwestern Pennsylvania with his fiancé and their 1 year old daughter. Michael is a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania and holds degrees in computer science and criminal justice. He works as a computer technician for one of the largest public school districts in the county. He is in contact with many various computer systems on a daily basis. Thanks to his parents, he got into computers when he was in 10th grade and hasn’t looked back since. Starting with basic technical support, he moved into programming and has even developed smartphone applications. His interests include: computer security, game programming, passwords, computer forensics, thrift shopping, and photography. He writes on his blog at: http://abitofabyte.blogspot.com/. He can be contacted directly via email at: [email protected].

Preface

Do you feel like your computer used to be way faster? Wonder why it is so bogged down? Tired of waiting five minutes just for a program to open? This book is intended to be a learning guide into the world of malware prevention. Using this book, readers will be able to identify various threats that slow down a computer system. Using free tools, readers will be able to find such threats and eliminate them from their systems.

Once completed, readers will also learn techniques to speed up the Windows operating system. No more waiting forever for a computer to fully boot. No more ads or pop-ups. No more lengthy virus scans where after, the problem returns.

Included at the end of this book will be valuable resources and a list of all the software tools used. You can download the software (Chapter 17) prior to reading through the book to be able to follow along.

I hope you enjoy reading this and can take away a few key lessons from it.

~Michael

Computers don’t understand body language so you have to deal with them in a different way than you do with people.

Professor Donald Knuth, 1981

Chapter 1: Virus, Worm, Trojan, Oh My!

Ever wonder why your computer felt faster than it does now? Tired of paying someone high fees to fix your computer only for the problem to come back? Wish you knew more about what was going on inside of that mysterious computer case? Want free ways to instantly speed your computer up? Well look no further! This chapter is going to be a quick introduction on why your computer tends to slow down over time.

I remember getting our first powerful computer at home when I was in 10th grade. It was a Dell desktop system that my dad special ordered. I was addicted. I spent many restless nights on our dial-up connection getting acquainted with Windows. It was tons