DO YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH WIRELESS PHONE RECEPTION IN YOUR HOME?

Well, you can feel better about it because a lot of others have similar issues. About a year ago I had to install a booster for an AT&T customer in his house so he wouldn't miss a call (he works out of his house), and the box did what it was supposed to do - give him solid reception whether upstairs, downstairs or on the porch.

Very recently, researchers hacked a Verizon box (even after they applied a security patch to prevent this), which would allow them to listen in on your phone calls. Read the article HERE.

FORECAST? HEAVY SNOWDEN. IT'S TIME TO MOVE THIS SHOW TO SATURDAY NIGHTS

SNOWDEN

The latest news from the man who can't keep his mouth shut is that he has a blueprint on how the NSA operates.

If I were a network or news organization I would just let Snowden drop from sight as he seems to feed on all of this media attention.CNET

RANSOMWARE

You should all be familiar by "Ransomeware" by now [ed.- especially if you read this Blog]. For those with short memories, the people behind Ransomware tend to target small businesses, as well as the average home owner, usually with an official FBI warning but effectively cutting off their Internet until either they're paid, or 3rd party company is called in to get rid of it. As far as small businesses, there is an article on PC WORLD about it HERE.

GUTLESS COWARDS, OR, NON-GUNS OWNERS?

A business recently sent out text messages to their employees that they were closing the business, thus firing said employees. Is this the new way of doing things, or, a safer way to avoid mass shooting from angry ex-employees? How long these former owners will have to hide in their secret underground bunker is unclear. CNET

May your Monday be uneventful -

'Nuff Said,
Brian

DON'T ALWAYS TRUST ONE SOURCE WHEN IT COMES TO SECURITY

It's a tough world out there and sometimes security watchers like myself  miss a thing or two because of  a number of things like: job, health, a spouses health, etc. An excellent example of this is my July 1st post where I wrote about two virus/worm/trojans helping each other out to keep from being detecting.

So if you read this Blog, you already know about it. If you only read Computer World's posts then you would not read about it until today (July 3rd) where they had a story about the same thing. I probably read, or at least look at twenty or more sites to see if there is anything special going on that I should write and let you know about, but even twenty sites is small potatoes when it comes to finding out about the latest security issues.

I'd suggest you start off by picking five sources for security information and just make it part of your daily routine to look at each site to see if some new Malware has risen like Godzilla and is terrorizing computers around the world.

'Nuff Said,

Brian

IT'S ONLY GETTING WORSE

IT'S ONLY GETTING WORSE

OR

1 + 1 = 2

It's bad enough when you have one malware infection on your computer (which is rare - usually if you have one then you have a nest of 'em breeding in your system), but when you have two specific programs designed to work with each other it makes the removal task almost impossible.

One is a Trojan downloader from 2009 called Vobfus which downloads pieces of Malware code onto your computer. It's partner is called Beebone, and the two of them work together to monitor what you, or your anti-virus are doing in removing part of their "BORG COLLECTIVE".

What happens? Depending on which one spots the attempted removal first, it notifies it's undetected partner which contacts a remote server and downloads a variant (slightly different pieces of code) that now pass your virus and/or other virus removal programs from detection. Could it get any worse?

YES...

Vobus is also a worm that will copy itself to any removable drive, i.e. - USB flash drive, mapped network drive, etc. Once on the drive it activates autorun so the next computer you put that stick into will - infect that computer. Would you like to read more about this? If so, you can find the article HERE, in an excellent piece complete with photos, from Microsoft's "MALWARE PROTECTION CENTER".

'Nuff Said,

Brian

OLD VIRUS - NEW TRICKS



First, I'm sorry about the lack of Blog Posts lately, but between the procedure they did on my back, and then earlier this week (when my wife dislocated her ankle and broke it 3 places) I have had little time to get near a computer.

You may or may not remember Malware called "Citadel", which at that time targeted banks and other financial institutions. Well, this time around it's been revamped to infect popular sites (Amazon, Ebay, etc.) we visit according to Trusteer security...

"When the targeted websites are accessed from computers infected with the new Citadel variant, the malware replaces them with rogue versions that claim users' accounts were blocked because of suspicious activity. The victims are then asked to input their personal and credit card information in order to confirm that they are the legitimate owners of the accounts and proceed to unlock them."

So, be on the alert for something like that appearing via email or on the website itself. While Microsoft, along with other companies or agencies brought down the Citadel "Botnet" it was successful, but only to a certain extent. Anyone can get a "Citadel Builder" program and build their own, to their specifications.

To get a more in-depth idea on how this works, I would recommend you visit the Trusteer Blog Site HERE.

'Nuff Said,
Brian

SECURITY BITS'N BYTES









Recently, McAfee Anti-Virus and Security announced it took the average company 10 hours to detect an intrusion. By average, I can only think they meant companies like your Bank, a Stock Trading firm, etc. - not your average 50 employee-or-less company, or even a retail business like Walmart or Best Buy. It takes big bux to afford the kind of protection and seasoned security personnel to detect an intrusion (on average) in 10 hours. McAfee's CTO, Mike Fey said:

“This study has shown what we’ve long suspected - that far too few organisations have real-time access to the simple question ‘am I being breached?’  Only by knowing this, can you stop it from happening,”

Read the whole article HERE.

And speaking of McAfee, it's hard not to ignore the strange behaviour of it's original father John McAfee. He has been traveling (ed. - on the run) ever since his neighbor in Belize was murdered, and having previous encounters between the two the police wanted a word with him - however he is not in Belize any longer.

Most recently (in May) he accused the Belize Government after his house mysteriously burned down. You can read that article HERE.

'Nuff Said,
Brian

ZERO ACCESS









I haven't read any alerts about a resurgence of the Zero Access Trojan, but here in the Houston area we've seen an uptick of this annoying little bugger. If your PC no longer can get to the Internet then most likely it's the Zero Access Trojan.

The ones I've run across, including today, are identified as Zero Access but unlike before the utility that ferrets it out doesn't identify the variant as there are at least 5 variations (versions) of this floating around. Maybe someone took it and tinkered with it a bit, nonetheless, it's back.

'Nuff Said,
Brian

HOW STRONG ARE YOUR PASSWORDS?








Last month Deloitte [Deloitte's Technology, Media, and Telecommunication, also known as TMT], came out with a 3 page report regarding passwords, how strong you think they are, and how strong they really are.

Like I've been telling you [by Blog or in person] the days of the one word password are over and you should consider using passphrases instead. An example I gave to a customer the other day was to abandon a one word password and come up with a passphrase like -

 "Itrainsinspainbutonlyintheplains"

 as well as substituting a $ for the letter "S", or a 0 for the letter "O"

The customer said that they didn't know they could do that and would work on some passphrases of their own. I also reminded them to come up with enough passphrases for every account. Deloitte's report noted that - 

"The average user has 26 passworded accounts but uses only five different passwords amongst them".

The obstacle here is the common complaint "I can't remember all of those passwords". My reply to home users is to either use a password account utility program, or if they are using Norton 360 or Symantec's Internet Security they already have one built into the program. The common reply is: "I never knew I had this feature".

You can download the 3 page .PDF report off their website HERE.

'Nuff Said,
Brian