Byline: Brian Krebs

Security Fix blogger Brian Krebs was online Friday at 11 a.m. ET to answer your questions about the latest computer security threats and offer ways to protect yourself and your personal information.

A transcript follows .

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Brian Krebs: Happy Friday, dear Security Fix readers, and thanks for joining us after an extended hiatus. Keep your questions coming....I'll get to them as fast but as thoroughly as I can.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Brian - I asked for advice in your last online chat about Flash 9.0 not working after installation, and you advised downloading a new uninstaller to get the old version off my system properly. Well, I tried it, and Flash still doesn't work for IE (works fine for Firefox). No 9.0, no 8.0, nothing for IE. Any further suggestions? Thanks for following up...

Brian Krebs: Hi Silver Spring. Thanks for circling back, and I'm sorry my solution only partly worked for you. Have you visited Adobe's "Help! I can't install Flash" troubleshooting page? If not, check it out. It's at this link here .

Also, you probably need to have IE completely closed out before any uninstall and re-install of Flash. Make sure all IE windows are closed by going to the Task Manager (ctrl-alt-delete) and checking for the presence of "Iexplore.exe". If you see it, terminate it, and then try reinstall again. Good luck.

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Philadelphia, Pa.: Brian, The more that you write about organizations like "Carderplanet," the better. The Internet, while an amazingly useful entity, has turned into a seriously risky place for the unwary. Raising people's awareness to the point where they understand that the Internet is like real life is key. Practices like never giving out your credit card number unless -you- have initiated the transaction still hold true on the Internet, for example. That action, alone, negates many phishing attacks.

What is of a longer-term concern to me is the potential for all of the compromised computers now used as zombies to send out spam and the like to be used to attack our national infrastructure systems, financial institutions, etc. After all, why try and sneak in a bomb across the border when you can sit in relative safety and have several thousand remotely-controlled broadband-connected computers do the dirty work for you?

Brian Krebs: Hi Philadelphia. Thanks for the nice words about our coverage. Philadelphia is referring to a recent blog post where I point a video made by an online organized crime group advertising their criminal services.

Not sure if there was a question in there, but I wholeheartedly agree with you. There are a number of security experts who clamor that we are very vulnerable to the attacks you describe, and that targeted cyber attacks on our infrastructure could disrupt the economy and maybe even cause the loss of life (esp. if timed to coincide with a physical attack on the US.). Others say such an attack is not very likely, and that it is best to focus our resources on preventing physical attacks on US citizens or our key infrastructure points. But really, this comes down to an issue of priorities: many systems that are used to control our water, gas, electrical, chemical manufacturing networks, etc,. are increasingly being connected online, and in many cases to the global internet, and in many cases the security-through-obscurity model is very much in plan on these systems.

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Washington, D.C.: I've been running Vista for a week or so...and while it is a raphically pleasing interface, it seems like it's not much more than a Windows ME edition for the 21st century...like a glossed over Windows XP. Aside from the IP6 integration, glass, and somewhat helpful system access pop up warnings...what is the reason to abandon XP for Vista at this point?

Brian Krebs: Haha. Yes, Vista is some serious eye-candy, and its interface is very pleasing to the eye. Unfortunately, Microsoft still has to iron out a number of wrinkles. I installed it myself on a separate partitioned hard drive on a machine at home, and after initial boot up, it wouldn't recognize my wireless keyboard and mouse (both of which were made by Microsoft.) Upon third reboot, it finally recognized and installed the necessary device drivers. But strangely enough, when I boot back into my default Windows XP installation, the wireless Microsoft keyboard no longer works. Yes, yes, I know....it's still beta.

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Bethesda, Md.: Yesterday my PC began yelling at me ("Zowie!! How ABOUT that!" and the like). Granted that I certainly speak sharply to -it- plenty - and turnabout is fair play - but I'm worried something nasty has slipped in. Besides anti-spyware programs (a good idea I realize), is there any way I can tell in the Task Manager if a given process should be running on my PC? I recognize those relating to applications, but the system processes have relatively arkane names. Is there a list somewhere that identifies benign/useful processes (for the somewhat computer-literate user)? Thanks.