How to never accidentally run Malware: Must Have Windows Tweaks

so we have two files like two doors over here one of them is the door of Doom that is going to lead to this computer being completely destroyed all of our data erased and the other one is just an innocent normal PDF that we need to open they both say they're totally legit and as a cyber security analyst myself I couldn't tell you which one was innocent so if you've set yourself up like this and you're having to make this decision you have set yourself up for failure but let's give it a try anyway so which one do you think we should open well this one has a smiley face so maybe this is the innocent one surely something that's smiling at me isn't going to hurt me right 50/50 and we chose wrong well it's too late now and all of our data is encrypted by the infamous black matter ransomware in this video we're going to talk about how you can prevent a situation like this simply by configuring your system correctly and this is going to apply if you're just a home user if you're trying to configure your systems for business to make them idiot proof so that this cannot happen so let's go back and start again shall we unfortunately this is how most people use their computers and it's not optimal from a security standpoint well first of all you want to be able to see what the file type is instead of relying on the icon as an indicator because icons can be changed so even though this has the icon of a PDF and looks exactly the same as a legitimate PDF and I'll open it just to prove the point since we didn't get to after executing the ransomware but the point is they both look identical and no matter how smart you are as a user when you're using your computer you're not going to inspect the code of everything that you click on that's just not how we function so what you want to do is go into view and make sure that you have details selected and now all of a sudden things look a little bit different if we look at the type now we can see that one is a Microsoft Edge PDF document and the other is an application if you want to make this point more pronounced you can also move the type to be the first thing on the description so you instinctively look at the type before you read the name another small modification you can do to your explore window is to enable the preview window so if it says no preview available able it usually means it's an application now another thing you can do is set it to show details here as well in which case you're going to see the size the application and it's going to give you an easier link to properties but even if you don't use either of these you're much better off with this setup where you've got the type and you also want to click on it so applications are ordered by type so if you have let's say five PDFs all of them are going to be grouped together and the application is going to be grouped separately and this can be a problem so for example if we grab a few PDFs from here copy them over to our documents folder now all of a sudden if the application has a similar name and it's in the midst of these PDFs it's going to be very easy for you to open it and run the malware whereas if we click on the type and sort everything by type now you know that this is an application so it's going to be at the top or the bottom and all the other PDFs are going to be segregated but most people have already lost by this point they never get to see the thing they're executing in the Explorer window they execute it directly off the browser so maybe they download something that they think is a PDF and then they click on the open button in the browser itself now in order to avoid that you want to change some settings in the browser going into downloads you want to set up a download location and you don't want to ask the user for each download you want to have this turned off off and you also want to make sure that you do not show downloads menu when a download starts so this is going to disable that little prompt here that tells you that a file is downloading and it's just going to download to your location so instead of clicking the open Button instinctively and running something that may be something you don't want to run you're going to finish your download and then you're going to go into the downloads folder and then you're going to see ah this is an application but what I wanted to open was a PDF and by then your brain can catch up these tips may seem very basic but trust me if I put myself in a situation where I'm looking at a window like this I'm not going to have the ability anymore to distinguish between what I'm running and what I should not be running another thing that you should absolutely change is view file extension so you want to make sure that you go into the view section again and click on show and fall name extensions this is something that I believe windows should do by default but it doesn't so now you do and with this view you are very unlikely to accidentally open an application thinking it's a PDF and believe it or not even today with all the info stealer malware this is how most people get infected they accidentally run an info stealer thinking it's a PDF or a contract or something sometimes simple tweaks like this can be the difference between a large organization getting infected and paying millions of dollars to a cyber criminal and nothing happening people going about their day the thing is when it works you don't hear about it so let me know in the comments below if you think these kinds of tweaks make a difference in your personal experience with them have you accidentally executed malware cuz I know I have and I made a video talking about it as well but remember to like and share if you found it helpful post on LinkedIn as well cuz you don't want your co-worker to run that ransomware and infect your company either also this video is sponsored by malware bites many of of you may know this as the legendary second opinion scanner but now it comes with full realtime protection so if we try to reexecute our malware even if we have it set up this way it is going to be blocked one of things worth highlighting here is that malware bites is definitely very different to what it was few years ago so for example now we don't just have simple detection capabilities if we go into settings you will see that under security we have things like exploit protection Brute Force protection and if we go into advanced settings we have application hardening capability similar to what you would expect for an Enterprise grade product we also have an option to block penetration testing attacks which can protect you from techniques that hackers would use to infiltrate your system so if you haven't checked it out in a long time you can click on link in description try them out show them some love for sponsoring this video personally one of things I really like about malware bites is that it works on execution so it's not going to annoy you with a ton of alerts even if you have a malware file on your system it's only going to block it when it's executed which is perfect for somebody like me who likes to play around with this stuff you can check out all of the new features for free using the link in description thank you so much for watching and as always stay informed stay secure

Channel: The PC Security Channel

Views: 328,687

Keywords: The PC Security Channel, TPSC, cybersecurity, cyber security, computer security, internet security, antivirus, anti malware, ransomware, trojan, virus, PUP, best antivirus, best internet security, learn cybersecurity, hacking, hack, security, technology, cyber insurance, cybersecurity degree, best EDR, EDR, how to not get hacked, windows tweaks to stop malware

Id: 76Z6dvNyUww

Length: 7min 20sec (440 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024