Computer games are not risk free. The AVAST Virus Lab has identified over 60 individual sites during the last 30 days that contained game or arcade in their URL address.
- Avast Security Software

Avast reports that they are seeing more and more reports of software infiltration and malware, coming from websites aimed at children. Specifically gaming sites such as cutearcade.com (who apparently refused to comment)

In the industry this has been noticed time and time again…

I really can’t say it often enough – Your children can kill your computers!

In my usual daily work I constantly battle with this stuff. Probably, on average, I get at least once a week I get a call from someone who starts with the immortal words “I let Johnny/Jenny play on the computer, now I cannot (delete as appropriate) get on the Internet/access my emails/access my files/do anything without adverts popping up/close this application; the list goes on…

The most often this happens is just after Christmas; less so after other major holiday periods too.

Sigh…

Have a read here: Hackers spread malware via children’s gaming websites
And here’s the Avast press release: Online game sites can be cute, pink, and infected

It’s a simple thing to correct though…

Don’t let your kids anywhere
near your business computers!

I hope that was obvious enough…

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  Almost three-quarters of firms and public sector organisations across nine European countries may not fully recover their computer systems or data after an IT failure, a survey suggests.

A survey by IT group EMC asked 1750 bosses if they were “confident they could fully restore their networks” – 74% said “No”!

It also found that 54% had lost data or suffered downtime in the last 12 months. Personally I’m amazed that figure isn’t higher! I guess it depends on what they are classing as ‘Downtime’.

Having been in the business a long time I can tell you that the number of customers I have dealt with on a regular basis, that think about these kinds of things are very few. It is not something that clients worry about. Furthermore, it is a topic that some clients feel that you are using to try to scare them in to buying something!

On the flip side of that coin we have seen several instances where a lack of disaster recovery planning has caused the company irreparable harm, resulting in the closure of the business.

It is not an easy thing to get a solid plan and systems in place, but they may stop the loss of business critical systems data.

Heed the warning – business continuity and disaster recovery should be near the top of any IT project!

Of course you can call us free of charge, for an initial chat about this… 08456 340 599

News article here

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For so long Apple owners have grinned in a smug manner at PC users, over the amount of security issues PC owners have to deal with, even though it is a fallacy that Macs are immune to malware; a fallacy that is being exploited more and more as time goes on.

In a blog post by security form Sophos on Monday, it was revealed that a new ‘sophisticated’ malware threat was targeted at Macs and downloaded via a legitimate image manipulation app. from a dodgy source.

This malware, known as ‘DevilRobber or OSXMiner-D’ was designed to steal and ‘mine’ the digital currency known as ‘Bitcoins’.

In addition to Bitcoin mining, OSX/Miner-D also spies on you by taking screen captures and stealing your user names and passwords. More-so it runs a script that copies information to a file called dump.txt regarding truecrypt data, Vidalia (TOR plugin for Firefox), your Safari browsing history, and .bash_history.

The post goes on to say “Clearly, Mac users – like their Windows cousins – should practice safe computing and only download software from official websites and legitimate download services. But, in addition to that, it’s becoming clearer every week that Mac users need to take malware protection more seriously by running anti-virus software.”

This is just another example of the increasingly more sophisticated, Mac assaults. Other malware threat discovered this month targeted at the Apple machines include ‘Tsunami’ and ‘FlashBack’.

The posting ends with “There may be a lot less malware for Mac OS X than there is for Windows, but many Mac users are making themselves an unnecessarily soft target by imagining that they are somehow magically protected from threats.”

We sell the Eset Security products which offer Mac versions – Contact us through the main site here to arrange a free 30 day trial…

 

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Computer security is a tricky business, and we get at least 10 calls a week, asking is something is legitimate or that a PC has been ‘infected’.

Thanks to many media stories about hacking this and data that, people are, quite rightly, worried about the potential of their PCs lack of security.

Sadly, there are people praying on that very sense of paranoia, and promoting ‘fixes’ for ‘detected threats’ – when in actuality there is no real threat but the awful fake software warning you.

This warning rapidly escalates in to many pop-ups about ‘Security risks’, ‘Detected virus activity’ or ‘Illegal content detected’ ~ then, miraculously, you can pay £££s to have all these issues fixed.

That’s exactly what the scammers are after. Your hard earned pounds.

In this case approx. £45 MILLION  of your hard earned pounds!

Many, many people have fallen for this scam ~ and I have to admit (having seen several versions of this very scam), it does seem incredibly legitimate ~ paying sometimes over £80 to get the fake fixes.

Finally the FBI have got involved and conducted raids in 12 nations, worldwide. These raids, dubbed “Operation Trident Tribunal”, and led to computers being seized and gaining control of 5 bank accounts used to hold the cash collected.

The solution is simple ~ and incredibly impractical ~ don’t use the Internet or put anything on your PC. That’s the best preventative measure you can have (one security expert said that the only way to completely protect a PC from threats, is to leave it in the box!). There is however, some more practical, preventative steps to take.

Firstly, you need a good anti-virus package ~ we use the Eset software, and have for many years. This software will warn you of potential problems before you get some nastiness in there. It will also clean  the badness out if you do get infected too.

Secondly, don’t click on any advertisements, some carry secret code to infect and infiltrate your PC.

Finally, avoid websites that are heavy in those self same adverts, this usually means ‘free’ gaming sites, gambling sites, or anything of an adult nature.

If you do have problems though – call us! 08456 340 599
We’ll get you clean

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On of my clients was hacked the other day – well, when I say ‘Hacked’ I mean that they had someone go onto their PC without authorisation.

In fact they were not hacked as such, but their old IT guys had left a HUGE security hole in their system for ‘convenience’ – NEVER a good idea! What a stupid thing to do!!
This was then exploited (as you might expect), and some stuff was ordered via their online accounts (Amazon etc…).

Once the person was into the network they garnered more information from the connected PCs and tried to order stuff with the accounts that were on other PCs.

Fortunately the clients mum called her to ask about an email that popped up (at 04:00 in the morning!) and the client caught the person dialled in to the PC and dumped the connection – she then managed to check the history of the intruder and contact the people that things were ordered from.

It’s looking like she was spectacularly lucky!! The people who were contacted have stopped the orders and things are looking like going back to normal – with the exception of come cancelled cards that is!
This could so easily have been much much worse.

In this case it’s looking lots like some clown connected to the machine and simply used the existing details on the PC to order stuff – its a good thing too – a more savvy intruder would have left all sorts of Trojans and back-doors so he/she could simply walk back in later and do the same again, with the new cards and accounts etc…

Suffice to say the fraud squad are doing their thing…

I’ve done a complete scan and clean up and am as sure as I can be that there is nothing left in the wake – I think the interruption stopped any long term damage happening.

I guess the moral is that you never know just how secure you are – you can only do the best you can, and hope it never happens…

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