As we wander down this path that is Cyber Security Awareness month it reinforces that on one hand the Internet is a source of an unimaginable wealth of  information and knowledge and on the other hand is a scary place where evil lurks in dark corners.  The question for the day is how can you explore the Internet while avoiding nasty sites.

As a security practitioner I am often taken off the beaten path of the Internet to do research, so it is important that I have some help avoiding nefarious sites. Here are a few tools that  I use:

• I use Firefox and the Web-of-Trust add-on to help me identify potentially naughty sites.  Web of Trust adds colored circles after all links, green for good, yellow for questionable, and red for bad.  McAfee SiteAdvisor and other products do very similar things.
•  I use OpenDNS and utilize the Web Content Filtering capability to provide a layer of protection.

 If you have other tips on how to avoid nasty sites, please feel free to comment below or contact us via our contact form.

 Update from the contact form:

There are a number of websites that can be used to verify the reputation and safety of websites:

• Norton Safeweb
• McAfee Site Advisor
• Web of Trust

Locking down the host file is also an alternative.  The MVPs hosts project provides a good method to avoid ads and some troublesome sites.

If you still run Windows XP or earlier and must run as an administrator there is an intriguing way to browse the web as a non-administrator. 

-- Rick Wanner - rwanner at isc dot sans dot org - http://namedeplume.blogspot.com/ - Twitter:namedeplume (Protected)