Ask Slashdot: Securing a Windows Laptop, For the Windows Newbie? 503
madsdyd writes "I am a long-time user of Linux (since 1997) and have not been using Windows since 1998. All PCs at home (mine, wife's, kids') run Linux. I work professionally as a software developer with Linux, but the Windows installs at my workplace are quite limited, so my current/working knowledge of Windows is almost nil. At home we have all been happy with this arrangement, and the kids have been using their Nintendos, PS2/3's and mobile phones up until now. However, my oldest kid (12) now wants to play World of Warcraft and League of Legends with his friends. I have spent more hours than I like to admit getting this to work with Wine, with limited success — seems to always fail at the last moment. I considered an Apple machine, but they seem to be quite expensive.
So, I am going to bite the bullet, and install Windows 7 on a spare Lenovo T400 laptop, which I estimate will be able to run both Windows 7 and the games in question." Read on for more about the questions this raises, for someone who wants to ensure that a game-focused machine stays secure.
madsdyd continues: "Getting Windows 7 from a shop is surprisingly expensive, but I have found a place where they sell used software (legally) and can live with that one-time cost. However, I understand that I need to protect the Windows installation against viruses and malware and whatnot. The problem is, I have no clue how. One shop wants to sell me a subscription-based solution from Norton, but this cost will take a huge dip into my kid's monthly allowance — he is required to cover the costs of playing himself, so given that playing WoW is not exactly free, this is a non-trivial expense for him. On the other hand, he has plenty of time, so I guess he could use that time to learn something, and protect his system at the same time.How do other Slashdotters provide Windows installations for their kids? What kind of protection is needed? Are there any open source/free protection systems that can be used? Should the security issues be ignored, and instead dump the Windows install to an external disk, and restore every two weeks? Is there a 'Windows for Linux users' guide somewhere? What should we do, given that we need to keep the cost low and preferably the steps simple enough for a 12-year-old kid to perform?"
value of your time (Score:5, Insightful)
Run it through your regular NAT router setup and tell your kid not to download nasty stuff!
And consider the educational value of having him get viruses. And the joy of reinstalling the OS.
Maybe he will appreciate dad's wisdom to date ;)
Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Your kid might not be satisfied with the way WoW works on an old T400 laptop. Check the graphics specs vs. the game recommendations. And for security, I'd just use Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free, probably works as well as any of the subscription-based anti-virus products and how much do you really care if your kid's game platform gets a virus?
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Wine - Get Crossover, But Also Get Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Two comments -
1. If you're going to use Wine, go purchase Codeweaver's Crossover version. It's much better than the standard Wine. Plus, you can get a warm fuzzy feeling you're paying to support open source. PlayOnLinux is an option too.
2. However, do expose your children to Windows. It's what they're going to learn in school and possibly what they'll need in the workplace. (Oh, I'm sure some people would like to point out why I'm wrong, people have been predicting the demise of Windows for decades. It's still the de facto standard.)
Finally, just go download something like MIcrosoft Security Essentials or Avast for your antivirus. They're free and work.
Re:value of your time (Score:4, Insightful)
At 12 years old, he's about an age where he can learn about malware, virusses and backups yet young enough that data loss will be marginal.
Ideally, set up a backup of any important files (homework, pictures, email) from Linux that the kid doesn't know about so atleast the damage can be repaired after he's learned his lesson. It should be easy to setup from whatever current backup solution you have running. If you have no current backup solution, you should worry about education yourself on security before you start educating your kid ;)
Re:Well, do it, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Any snooping should be in the open and agreed upon beforehand."
Exactly. Any it doesn't matter if the child looks at porn. That's what teenagers do. Even better, find some sites with some non-extreme porn (no violence, and even no insults at the women) so that the child doesn't think that fucked up things are normal. It's not normal to insult and hit a women (unless she wants you to). Hell, maybe even just some naked pictures, no need to show sex at all.
Unable to meet all requirements.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to keep the laptop secure. You want a 12 year old to use it. You want it to run Windows.
There is no solution. There will always be security risks and in some cases a negative time-frame to deal with them. Doesn't matter how good your AV is or what utilities you put on there, if it's connected to the Internet and there's a user at the keyboard then it is inherently insecure.
Now, how "secure" do you need it to be? If you're ok with putting that laptop on a separate subnet from everything else and teach the kiddo to do a proper update check every couple of days you should be able to mitigate most of the 'risk'.... but that seems a bit much to ask.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, do it, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
He said his son is going to play WoW. That means visiting WoW sites, and possibly WoW guilds. This means he'll be exposed to keyloggers, malware and other crap. While I agree it's better to avoid the whore than to wear the condom, but if you know you're going to visit the whore anyway better suit up. Also, and I know many parents particularly on slashdot don't agree with me and that's fine, but my children get privacy once they reach majority and move out and establish financial independence. Until then their lives are my business.
If your son is going to play wow, make sure he has two factor authentication enabled. Especially important is to make sure he sets his email password differently than his game password (or better yet, you sign up for his account with one of your disposable email accounts, and let him create the battlenet account).
You want a windows appliance eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translating - you aren't a windows guy, and you aren't going to become one for this, but you don't want to waste time reinstalling every couple of weeks or listen to your kid crying his account got hacked.
With that premise
- Set Windows updates to nightly download and install automatically.
- MSE (AV from MS) is fine, oddly enough. Its even light enough you can run a second one such as Avast! if you wish.
- NAT router in front assumed
- Leave the Windows Firewall on, don't enable file sharing
- Install Firefox, make it the default browser, load two addons - NOSCRIPT and AdBlock Plus. Remove the IE icon from the desktop.
- Council the kid that this is NOT his general internet browsing/use machine. It is dedicated for the games. Continue to browse etc. on the systems you know how to maintain.
With the above, you have no cost, minimal maintenance and the machine is very likely to stay secure for years.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
/proc/sys/brain/swappiness = 0 (Score:4, Insightful)
By and large, real gamers are pretty clueless about software, know less about OSes, and nothing about security. What they know of hardware comes straight from benchmarking websites.
Generally speaking, you get ugly results when you run out of RAM with no swap file. Windows of course has notoriously aggressive paging, and changing this behavior is not as simple as on other OSes. There are a couple of registry settings, however, that govern how large the filesystem cache is and whether drivers and core components can be swapped to disk. You can also lock the process in memory if you really must.
Yes, you can more simply set the swap size to zero. Yes, many people don't have stability problems with this. Yes, you can use a wrench instead of a hammer if you have to.
If your system is having issues with paging, don't disable paging: just buy more RAM.