B
BillW50
No, I probably did say I didn't enable updates. This is true for some of
my computers, but not all of them.
Which hotfixes do I install? Not many on most of my computers. On XP SP2
ones which has more than 1GB of RAM I grab KB909095. Without it, XP may
not be allowed to hibernate. About 99.9% of hotfixes doesn't, nor will
ever effect me. So why install them?
Security fixes? I have done tons of experimenting on this. As when I
first heard some users doesn't install them and they also don't get
malware either. I needed to know why?
And what I had found to be the most important thing for security is a
stealth firewall. This stops 99.99% of the problems right there. As your
computer will no longer communicate from sources that you didn't
intentionally request. Not doing this, a computer can be infected within
90 seconds or less just by going to Windows Update. XP or later already
has a stealth firewall so no need to add one. Plus routers by default
act as a stealth firewall too (although you can configure them to do
otherwise).
The second important thing to cover the other 0.1% of the problem is a
real time AV scanner (and really keep this up-to-date). Which scans
everything that is being opened or executed (which stops it in its
tracks). And this is the only time malware can do any harm.
Just these two things will keep many users malware free. For the ones
who don't go to untrusted sites anyway. Although in either case, there
is a very small chance that one may run into a zero day malware.
Ah! Here is the third thing you need to cover these. Run all Internet
activities through a sandbox. Thus your OS, AV, firewall, or anything
else cannot be compromised. And after a day or two with a good AV, zero
day malware can no longer hide (even in the sandbox) and it is powerless
to stop the AV from removing it.
Now we come to Windows security fixes. Why do we need them again? As if
the firewall is blocking unsolicited attacks, the AV stops all malware
found in its database, and the sandbox is covering your butt for
everything else. Then why bother? As nothing can sneak in anyway no
matter if the OS has zillions of holes in it.
The real test is actually trying a number of computers on the Internet
and not installing any security fixes. And then see what happens. And I
was hearing reports of users of older version of Windows which Microsoft
doesn't supply security fixes for anymore and they aren't getting
infected either. So why was that?
After experimenting with this for many years, I can't find any evidence
whatsoever adding this extra layer does anything at all. As you are
already covered by a firewall, AV, and a sandbox anyway.
And you know how this security fixes work anyway. As holes are always
there in any complex OS (Windows isn't alone here). And programmers plug
the ones that are discovered, but there are always more. Worse, the OS
itself gets hotfixes which can also create more new holes. This is an
endless cycle that never ends. And it is always a day late and a dollar
short. It's best just to abandon this whole approach to trying to plug
holes and do something else for security.
Yes Maxthon 3 uses two rending engines. As it uses either Trident (what
IE uses) and/or Webkit (Chrome uses this one too). Depending on which
one of my computers, I could have either IE6, 7, or 8 installed. And so
far, I haven't had any problems by not installing IE hotfixes. So I
don't worry about it.
Well having experimented with this for many years and hotfixes for
security doesn't matter if you have a firewall, updated AV, and a
sandbox anyway. And the only hotfixes I like are the ones that actually
correct a problem that I am having like that KB909095 one.
