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Published: April 18, 2009
If you read previous quick tip "How my computer could be attacked while I am surfing the Internet?", you will know virus or spyware are probably stealthily installed while you browse web sites hosting malware. Since firewall and anti-spyware can NOT provide 100% protection. Our best practice is to use virtual OS running inside host Windows to browser unknown or un-trusted web sites.
The virtual OS, e.g. Windows or Ubuntu running in VMWare, works as a quarantine environment for red zone access. When you visit web sites, especially unknown web sites, you use the browser running in the virtual OS. If any malware is installed stealthily and crash the virtual OS, it does not matter. You can delete the corrupted virtual OS image and copy the backup image back to your hard drive. You always have a working virtual OS available. Your main Windows won't be infected at all.
Our solution is to use VMWare as virtual OS container. VMWare has the following desktop products. You can choose one of them as the virtual machine.
Commercial product. VMware Workstation makes can create and run multiple virtual machines on your desktop or laptop computer.
Free product. VMWare Player can use the virtual machine created by VMWare Workstation, VMware Fusion, VMware Server or virtual appliances available through the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace.
For individual user, you can download free VMWare Player and the free appliance in VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace. For example, Ubuntu 9.04, a flavor of Linux with good desktop utilities.
Additionally, 90% virus or spyware targeting at MS Windows. Using Ubuntu is safer than using Windows on Internet. So your portable Ubuntu can last very long time.