I’ve preached my security sermon over and over. Now, here is a bank (yes, a bank) telling people to use an Ubuntu Live CD for their banking.
Jay McLaughlin, CIO of CNL Bank: Accessing online banking from your everyday PC is just asking for trouble, he says.
Your everyday pc? Yes – that means chances are good that if you use your everyday computer for banking, then you are asking for trouble. Why? There is above a 50% chance that your Windows pc (XP, Vista, or 7) is infected with malware.
According ot McLaughlin, unless your bank uses “out of band” authentication for transactions, and to quote him: “I would not do online banking at all. Or if I had to I would use a sandboxed browser. I would boot up a mini Linux system from a USB stick.
What is an Ubuntu Live CD? It is a full Linux operating system that will run your computer without harming or changing the installed contents.
Why does it make you safer? Since the operating system runs strictly from the CD, once you restart your computer, anything you have done with it will “disappear” with your RAM.
You download an ISO file and convert it a CD using one many free CD burning applications. You set your computer to boot from CD first in the BIOS. Put the CD in your drive and boot up.
Or – you could just buy a Mac.