How To Lock Down/secure A Public Computer

[ozymandious]

Hello I'm looking for a way to lock down a public computer.

The computer will be running MS Vista

I want the users to be able to:

• use the internet
  
• use the programs already installed on the machine
  
• use e-mail (outlook) and download attachments
  
• maybe even download files from the internet.
  
• run anti virus
  

I want to prevent:

• Installation of any program with out a 'supervisior' password or authentication. (No IM clients, simile-bar extensions, crapware and spyware)
  
• no un-install
  
• no changes to system settings
  

Can anyone recommended a good tutorial to look at, or a (hopefully Free) software solution.

Can I do this in vista by creating user accounts? Admin and Guest? if so can some one link to a tutorial?

Thank you.

Ozy

[Rice_King]

Microsoft's free solution. SteadyState

Quote: "You can't always prevent problems during a user session, but now you can undo the whole session. Learn how Windows SteadyState can return your computer and hard disk to its exact condition before the user touched it, simply by rebooting."

[ozymandious]

Thanks I'll look it up

doing some other poking around I've found out about 'Deep Freeze' this program (for pay) looks interesting too.

[wxpwzrd]

Depending on the environment of that computer, you might find Group Policies and Local Computer Policy built into certain versions of Vista helpful... That along with Steady State from Microsoft. To me Steady State is likely the good solution for scenarios such as Internet Cafes. Just re-image the system after use...

[yeti]

Or you could go the hardware route with a product like this one which can be bought for less than 10 $ here. Make sure it runs with Vista.

(I haven't tried the product, but I ordered other items from the shop in the second link, all delivered no problem).

[Rice_King]

Or you could go the hardware route with a product like this one which can be bought for less than 10 $

When I landed on the Recovery Star site I received a stern warning in my FireFox browser from the Google Safe Browsing plug-in. Note: This is the first time I have ever received a warning from Google Safe Browsing plug-in since installing it months ago. (I had forgotten that I even installed it.)

When I clicked on the link, Why was this siteblocked? I was sent to a page with the following text...

Safe Browsing

Diagnostic page for www.recoverystar.com/

What is the current listing status for www.recoverystar.com/?

Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 10 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 08/27/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 08/26/2008.

Malicious software includes 3 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 0 new processes on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 2 domain(s), including douhunqn.cn, ppexe.com.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including douhunqn.cn.

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, www.recoverystar.com/ did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Edited September 6, 2008 by Rice_King

[yeti]

Hi Rice,

I browsed a bit on this website and Avira antivirus did not detect anything. Anyway will make an online scan with Kaspersky and see if I caught anything. Sorry if someone caught something because of this link.