MONDAY BLUES NEWS

I could write a country western song the way this Monday morning has gone and if did, the songs title would be: "I woke up on the right side of the bed it was just the wrong morning" [ed. - hey, no beers and tears 'til after noon at least...]

COMMON SOFTWARE SECURITY HOLES

I read an article about common, everyday software we use daily on our computers and just how safe they are. After all, we're always hearing about the "BIG 3" (Microsoft, Adobe, JAVA), but what about the little guys?

Well, security testing firm Vercode just released a report about that [huh, I just was thinking about it and here it is?] isn't very assuring -

"22,430 applications submitted to the firms code analysis service in an 18-month period ending June 2012, only 13 percent of web applications were able to pass the generic OWASP Top 10 list of security problems"

Read the article HERE.

And, if you're interested in "SHYLOCK" the infamous banking Trojan, read that article HERE.

'Nuff Said,
Brian

IT'S FRIDAY!!

Yep, TGIF et. all, it's time to look at what, if anything is going on today regarding security. Well yes, apparently Microsoft released a really buggy patch this week and is attempting to fix it.

“We’ve determined that the update, when paired with certain third-party software, can cause system errors,” wrote Dustin Childs, a group manager in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing division, on a company blog. “As a precaution, we stopped pushing 2823324 as an update when we began investigating the error reports and have since removed it from the download center.”

Microsoft published instructions for how to uninstall the security update as well. Read the full article HERE.

BING? GOOGLE? WHICH, WHAT, WHY?

An anti-virus research firm in Germany has said that, after some study, they found Google searches 5 times safer than Microsoft's "BING".

'According to the study, out of 20 million websites provided by Google and Bing in equal part, 272 Google results contained malware, while Bing delivered almost five times as many infected websites: 1285 poisoned pages'

Read the full article at the link ----> HERE.

'Nuff Said (and have a virus-free weekend),
Brian

VOODOO HITS VUDU

Things seem to happen just after you sign up with them. Today, it's Walmart's "VUDU" video streaming program where you can put your ultraviolet movies up there to watch when and wherever from whatever. However it seems that their office was broken into and hard drives were stolen. What could be on those hard drives?

"The hard drives contained customer data including names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, account activity, dates of birth, account passwords and the last four digits of some credit card numbers, the company said on Tuesday."

Happily I use another service much more often than this, but - my info was on there.

You can read about it in this PC WORLD security bulletin, HERE. And yes, the reset every users passwords.

'Nuff Said,
Brian

Oh - I almost forgot that this past night was Microsoft update night, which is why I found my PC had rebooted when I woke up. Everyone doesn't get hit with the updates at the same time, but they should be by the end of the week.

LEFT-CLICK, RIGHT-CLICK, WHO COUNTS THE CLICKS?

Have you ever wondered if your mouse is really a rat? If so you could be right in thinking such a thing about the trusty device that has moved your mouse cursor for years, giving you carpal tunnel syndrome as well.

An article on PC WORLD caught my eye:

"Sneaky malware hides behind mouse movement, experts say"

Excerpt: Called Trojan.APT.BaneChant, the malware is distributed via a Word document rigged with an exploit sent during targeted email attacks. The name of the document translates to "Islamic Jihad.doc."

Read the link to the PC WORLD article for complete information

'Nuff Said,
Brian

BACKUP DAY CONT'D

And you thought I was going to let that subject go by so easily? As mentioned, there are several ways to backup and let's take a look at those a little closer.....

• In your car, put foot on brake pedal, shift to reverse, look in both directions then slowly let your foot off the brake pedal, allowing you to back up.
• Standing still with both feet on the floor, slowly move one foot/leg backwards settings it down and obtaining a firm position, then moving the other foot/leg backwards so that both feet are now fairly equal and you have backed up successfully.
• While sitting at computer look at the lower right-side corner of you desktop. Now move your mouse cursor over the time so that the date is visible. Now, have a happy April 1st....

Seriously, you do have a variety of options to choose from as mentioned in yesterday's post. Of those, I like three in particular:

• An external USB drive either with backup software provided or, you can choose to use the windows backup program.
• Backing up data to a website/cloud that encrypts and stores your data off site.
• Do both

If you choose the external USB drive, get one with enough space leftover covering for growth in the size of data on your computer. I'd refrain from picking out the newest, largest drive possible because sometimes there are issues with the latest/largest new drives that have to be worked out.

Make a game plan on your backups. Will they be weekly? Daily? Will the backup drive always be connected? (I asked that one because some external drives will not power down after a period of time with no use). If it's running all the time, your backup drive runs the risk of failing sooner (than later).

How many backup drives will you buy, and use? One? There is nothing wrong with using one drive, however if you had two or three, you could rotate them so theoretically they'd last longer, but, should one fail, you would still have at least another with most of your data on it.

Not that I'd wish this on you, but picture yourself coming home after work to find your house a smoldering pile of rubble. You just lost your computer, the data on the computer, and - your backup drive(s). It's not a pretty picture, but surely one to consider, along with other things like theft. This is where the online backup excels and I recommend "Carbonite".

Considering the value of just your digital photo's alone, at $60/year Carbonite is a very attractive alternative. Once you've set up your account you pick what folders or files you'd like to have backed up and Carbonite takes over and backs up your data to your special place in their cloud, encrypting it while they do it. Okay, your backup has completed!! Now what do you do? Answer: Nothing.

If you:

• Create a new Word document and press SAVE - Whoosh, up it goes to join your other data.
• Download new photos from your camera? Same thing.
• Open a previously saved document or photo and alter it? Once you press SAVE it replaces the older version in the cloud.

If it sounds pretty cool, your correct, PLUS - you can access your data from anywhere in the world using a computer and browser. All you need is your login name and password. So, it's now up to you and I hope you dofollow through -

'Nuff Said,

Brian