Help Save your HDD with a HOSTS file

Yes this post belongs here because it can help ppl to avoid bad sites which can wreak havoc with someone's hdd.

here are a few:

hacker.com
Xupiter.com
LOP.com
spysherriff.com
spytrooper.com
doubleclick.com
nitrous.exitfuel.com
exitfuel.com

these sites have downloaded rogue malware to many of our customers' hard drives without their permission and caused countless headaches to the 1000's that we see each year.

MOst of the people did not have a well configured firewall, but who knows if that contributed to their problems.

But u can stop your pc from accidentally visiting these rogue sites by making a HOSTS file.

A HOSTS file is just a text file that you can open and edit with Notepad, but it is called "HOSTS" without the .txt suffix

Each time you open any browser, it first goes to the HOSTS file and sees if any sites are posted into it with a loopback line.

for example if i wanted to keep certain family members from going to a few particular sites, i would write these lines into the HOSTS file:

127.0.0.1 www.hacker.com
127.0.0.1 www.xupiter.com
127.0.0.1 www.lop.com
127.0.0.1 www.spytrooper.com
127.0.0.1 www.spysherriff.com
127.0.0.1 www.youtube.com
127.0.0.1 www.myspace.com
127.0.0.1 www.exitfuel.com
127.0.0.1 nitrous.exitfuel.com
127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.com

( please dont click on thee above links)

the 127.0.0.1 is on the same line as the rogue site u want to keep from getting to.

There should be 1 space between the 127.0.0.1 and the rogue site.
then you save it to a very special directory where your browser is pre- programmed to look first....

In default windows XP, it is at C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

my HOSTS file has about 500 entries so far

So if u want to avoid certain sites, then the HOSTS file can help protect your hdd. It is not the Silver bull_et but every lil bit helps.

PS: ur pc should be re booted after editing a HOSTS file.

Or any IP address, not just the loopback address. If you have an entry such as:

192.168.1.1 your.hostname.here

Then your machine will resolve your.hostname.here to 192.168.1.1.

Actually your IP stack is configured to look there first. You can also use 0.0.0.0 also. Spaces do not matter; you can use a Tab (or mulitple tabs) if you desire to make it easier to read

Not necessary, just flush the DNS cache at the command line:

ipconfig /flushdns

Your OS is configured to look to the local cache first, then the hosts file, then DNS, by default.

Or you can install Spybot Search & Destroy and use the Immunize feature. It currently blocks over 16,000 known malicious sites by putting them in the Internet Explorer restricted sites list.

You could also do the same sort of blacklisting with the program IE-Spyad.

Or you could run Firefox with Ad-Block + FilterSet.G and NoScript running. Whitelist the sites you frequent. All other active content and ads get blocked at the door.

Make sure you're running SP2 w/latest Windows Updates. Enable the windows firewall and create exceptions for the programs you use often. Don't allow active content unless you trust the source.

Another hearty tip is to stop running your computer with a local administrator account! Create a Power Users account. It has the basic privileges except installation. Many silent spyware installs are thwarted when the installation privilage is not available.

Good post, I knew how the host file worked, Ive had to clean it out when viruses had blocked anti virus sites but never thought of doing back to them.
I may do it the the new PC's we sell.

Thnx for the Thought MArty...it's very nice to see positive attitudes on a forum.

and i'm not singling out marty....u know who u are

And you profess to be an IP professional, giving advice to your customers.... I pity your customers if you've just learned of this 'new' feature.

The hosts file has been part of every unix system since berkely, and dates back to as far as the first version of NT, possibly further.

This is very old news.