What is the problem?
For the most part Microsoft are very good at setting up an Operating System (OS) to ensure that the User is as safe as possible from attack from Malware and Viruses. Having said that, they do have to keep on their toes and the monthly updates that seem to cause almost as many problems as they solve are designed in no small part toward “patching” any newly found vulnerabilities. One thing they have never fixed is something that I go out of my way to resolve for every new Laptop or PC I set up. So what do I do? I make Windows settings changes to help prevent malware and Viruses.
In the relative dim dark past of IT people used to share music from a number of sources, some of which were not entirely legal. Well, along with these new ways that people were sharing files, the more nefarious people used to find these methods a very good way to disseminate viruses and malware to get access to individuals and business computers. Microsoft didn’t do these victims any favours, though. To keep their OS nice and clean Microsoft have a number of default settings that block certain information from showing from each and every file you have access to. Microsoft block the file extension from showing.
What that means from actual operation is that the way you determine the nature of a file is from either its name, where it is in your PC (Documents/Music/Pictures/Downloads/etc.) or from the icon that accompanies the files. The problem with that is that the hacker or just outright malicious individual uses that to find a way to have a file act as a trojan and get the dangerous software on to your computer. Let me explain…
How we see it in operation.
Getting back to the old music file sharing, a person used to download a file, (let us call it “The Latest Music.mp3”), put it on to their computer and then click on it to listen to it. The problem was that every so often no music came out. What happened instead was that the file was actually an executable file. In other words, rather than the file finishing in MP3 it finished in EXE. That’s because the file extension was being hidden by a Microsoft setting. The file was not “The Latest Music.mp3” it was actually “The Latest Music.mp3.exe”, but you would never know until it was too late.
The settings still exist and they still need to be fixed to ensure you don’t get caught by the same problems. The good news is that the solution is easy and well within your capability to rectify. In fact here is the how to:-
Windows settings changes to help prevent malware and Viruses.
Open the “Control Panel” (in this case the OS is Windows 10 and the easy way to find it is to go to the search bar and put in the word Control).
Navigate to “Appearance and Personalisation”
Select “Show hidden files and folders”
There are 2 changes to make here.
Change the “Don’t show hidden files, folders or drives” option to “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and change the selection of the “Hide extensions for known file types”
Now that you’ve done that, take notice of the file you’re clicking on. Look to the file extension. If you expect music, don’t click on a program (exe). If you expect a file from Word (doc or docx) or Excel (xls or xlsx) then look to the extension and know the likelihood is that you have exactly the file that you expect and not an attempt to infect your PC.
Keep up the fight.
Cheers, Andrew Burton.