hello and welcome to the pc security
channel in this video we're going to
look at some free tools that are going
to dramatically increase the amount of
control you have over the cyber security
of your system these are tools that i
use all the time you may have seen them
on the channel but in this video we're
going to list them do a deep dive it's
going to be fun so let's get started
this video is brought to you by guardio
so i'm going to start this list with
something called auto runs which is a
part of the sys internal suite by
microsoft this is an absolute must-have
on any new system as all of you who've
bought a laptop or computer recently
know especially if it's pre-built it
comes with a ton of stuff pre-installed
you may have built-in software adware
bloatware whatever you like to call it
and sometimes you won't be able to go
into settings and just uninstall these
apps individually and even if you do
they will leave traces now what autoruns
does is it shows you a list of
everything that's installed on the
system and configured to run
automatically and that does not only
include startup items there are startup
items there are things in the context
menu there are things within the browser
their schedule tasks anything basically
that hooks into the system so it can use
the part of the system to run is going
to be listed here and you can look at
these categories individually as under
log on under explorer so these are
things that are built into the file
explorer you can see things built into
internet explorer schedule tasks and
what's more if you click a magic button
over here it's going to do a farce total
scan for each of these entries and give
you the results so this is also a very
quick and effective way of identifying
malware because guess what if malware is
running on the system it has to start up
automatically in order to persist and if
you do happen to find something that you
would like to remove or you don't want
to run automatically you can just go
ahead and uncheck it and that is going
to prevent it from loading
in order to do that you will have to run
this as administrator
but once that's done you can go ahead
and basically uncheck anything you like
this is a great way to diagnose any
issues you're having with your system as
well just go ahead uncheck some of the
things that you think are suspicious
restart your system and see if the issue
persists and if you do happen to confirm
that something is a problem then you can
go ahead and right click and directly
delete the entry
this is an absolutely invaluable tool to
have in your arsenal every time i get a
new computer that's the first tool i go
through and check what's installed and
even if you don't remove anything this
can give you a much better understanding
if any kind of automated behavior is
happening this can help you understand
how it's happening and why and also
allows you to customize things to your
liking so for example when you right
click they're going to be
some settings here in the context menus
if you go into a folder for example
and right click on an item they're also
going to be different options here
and basically all of those are coming
from the explorer entries here so if you
want to remove something like for
example the onedrive stuff you can go
ahead and uncheck these you can control
schedule tasks now on my main system
there are ton of schedule tasks for
updating various parts of my you know
asus suite and what i like to do is
disable everything that i don't have a
use for and that's why i love using
autoruns it's not only a security
program but also a program that allows
you to take back control of various
aspects of your computer
now the second tool we're going to look
at is very similar it's called process
explorer and this is basically a more
powerful version of task manager and
just like autorun shows you everything
that's configured to run automatically
on the system this shows you everything
that's running on the system right now
and once again if you like you can scan
everything here using vars total so
again this is just a very quick and easy
way to identify if there's anything
malicious running on the system you can
quickly go through the listing and see
if anything's detected by verse total as
you can see the only thing i have on
this system that's suspicious is process
explorer itself but that's because some
false positive detections are there some
engines being aggressive detecting it
because it's a security tool but if you
have malware you're going to see a
process here with 50 or 60 detections
and in that case you can immediately
right click and kill the process or kill
the process tree which is better for
malware because it's also going to kill
any parent process that launched it you
can also restart a process if it's kind
of stuck or your system is hung up you
can suspend a process if you want to
pause it temporarily you can create a
dump to get all the contents of a
process so this is useful for doing any
kind of malware analysis so if you want
to dump all the contents of a malicious
process it can help you understand what
it's doing and any data that was sending
potentially as mentioned it's kind of
like task manager but for power users
moving on but sticking with the theme of
the first two tools we're going to look
at pe studio which is basically an
application that does the same thing
that process explorer does for process
and auto runs does for auto runs for pe
files so any kind of executable file
that you have on your system that you've
downloaded or somebody shared on discord
you can analyze very quickly using
pstudio and you don't have to be an
expert for it you just need to drag and
drop the file and once again this is
going to scan through the file give you
any indicators that it has regarding
malicious intent and it's also going to
do a virus total scan once again a very
quick and easy way of looking up any
executable or exe file that you come
across of course you will need to have
some understanding of the pe file
structure to make the most of this
anyone can use it to do a quick
firestall lookup and just verify that
there's nothing suspicious about a file
now we're gonna move to some tools that
are slightly more advanced but still
useful so this is hxd this is a hex
editor and the most common use case for
this is to look inside the contents of a
file so if we drag in any file you're
going to be able to see exactly what is
written inside it of course this is not
supposed to be readable but you can find
some bits of text that might help you
but most importantly it can give you an
idea of the file structure so if there's
a lot of blank space or any kind of
obfuscation that a thread actor has used
to hide the file or artificially enlarge
it you're going to be able to notice
that so if you see a lot of dots in here
it just means it's free space so if you
come across a file that's 500 megabytes
or a gigabyte in size and it looks like
potential malware you open it and hex
editor and then you happen to find that
everything inside at some point is just
blank then you know that the file has
just been artificially enlarged to avoid
detection by your antivirus product and
you can actually delete the empty space
and save the file and then scan it so
again a great way to get around
obfuscation techniques next up we have
some tools that are totally optional but
still a great utility to have and that
includes komodo firewall this is one of
the most advanced firewall programs that
you're gonna find on windows it gives
you a lot of control it shows you all of
your inbound and outbound connections
it's got a great user interface plus
it's a security program so it is going
to protect you from things like malware
it is going to do the job of a
traditional firewall and it also has an
intrusion prevention system or hips and
this is various different modes by
default it's going to come in safe mode
but if you have issues with the alerts
it's giving you you can always turn it
on to training mode for a while hips and
safe mode though is going to be good
enough to protect you from a lot of
malware so it can serve as a bit of a
security program to bolster your
defenses it's also got virus scope which
is going to scan your process for any
kind of malware and can also be used as
a network monitoring tool so if you
click on any of these process you can
get a bird's eye view of all the
connections that are being made from
your system the protocol being used tcp
or udp so again if you see something
suspicious here like a malware or
bitcoin miner connecting to a remote
server you can easily terminate it it
also gives you some powerful kill switch
options so if you go here and right
click you can go to block all and that's
going to immediately block all network
traffic you can set it to safe mode for
filtering and also if you're installing
this on a computer with a relatively
inexperienced user and you don't want
them to install any suspicious programs
you can turn on auto containment and
what this is going to do is sandbox any
applications that run most applications
that are not super sensitive will still
run inside the sandbox and work but
they're not going to pose as much of a
security risk because they will be
isolated from key parts of the system so
this is a great all-around tool and
since windows comes with windows
defender by default if you're not up for
installing a different antivirus komodo
firewall may give you the additional
security you need and it's free now the
next tool we're going to look at is an
antivirus now as i just mentioned
windows defender is free and it comes
with every system now but it's not
necessarily the best so you can
definitely upgrade your security with a
decent free antivirus of course on this
channel you will find tests of every
security program that's out there but
for the sake of this video we're gonna
keep it nice and simple and we'll talk
about two free security options so
bitdefender antivirus 3 is a good one
and the other one i would recommend is
kaspersky security cloud both of these
are absolutely free and they're great
programs from a purely application
security standpoint i think kaspersky is
the more sophisticated tool but
bitdefender is also a very easy set and
forget tool that does not come with any
additional software bloatware so for
whatever reason you don't prefer
kaspersky it's a great option to go with
by the way since i mentioned kaspersky i
know some people will be asking me about
whether or not it's safe to use
kaspersky products because it was
originally founded in russia i've made a
separate video on that which you can
find on the channel called is kaspersky
safety used now moving on the last tool
i'm going to talk about here is bit
warden this is a password manager and as
you all know you absolutely need to have
a password manager if you want to have
any hope of having secure passwords on
the internet what this is going to do is
allow you to store your password
securely and once again this is
absolutely free to use syncs across all
your devices so you can use it on your
mobile phone tablet everything it's
going to autofill your passwords as well
it's very powerful i love using it and
once again it's free so if you're not
using a password manager already
definitely go and check out bit warden
so i hope you found this list helpful
please like and share this video if you
enjoyed it if i missed any of the tools
you like make sure you mention them in
the comments there are a lot of tools
that i didn't mention specifically
because they're paid and i wanted to
just list free security tools but we
will be making more videos about
specific cyber security programs so make
sure you're subscribed to the channel if
you want to see that now time for
sponsors this video is brought to you by
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we're over at the wild side we're at
fish tank which is a site that's a
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websites that are going to attempt to
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but we do have cardio installed on this
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for your entire family these days it's
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channel this is leo thank you so much
for watching and as always stay informed
stay secure
you