Thursday, December 29, 2005

New vulnerability

From what I can tell, the short term soloution for this is not to open any attachments with *.wmf or *.emf file extensions. (ie "holiday party.wmf" or "my picture.emf")
  • Windows Vulnerability


  • 2nd story

    • posted by Dennis @ 10:02 AM 0 comments

    Wednesday, December 28, 2005

    alerts I have found today:

    Today we seem to have a poupori of interesting news. spam email, IM vulnerability, and password stealing trojan. It just goes to show that you have to keep on your toes about this stuff.
  • Dasher Worm

    • Court judgement could mean the end of spam mail:
  • End of Spam?


    • Security Bytes: New threats target IM chatters, Web browsers:
  • IE Vulnerability


    • Nabload.U Trojan Swiping Spanish-Speaking Bank Customers Passwords:
  • Password Scam

    • posted by Dennis @ 2:13 PM 0 comments

    Thursday, December 22, 2005

    Alert: AntiVirus Vulnerabilitys

    this just showed up:

  • McAfee

  • Symantec

    • posted by Dennis @ 11:43 AM 0 comments

    Monday, December 19, 2005

    Happy Holidays?

    Well not the best way but a very common way for many to bring in the holiday season is an array of exploits.

    here is info on the latest one:
  • Dasher Worm


    • With this exception you will be happy to know that as of this morning the major AV vendors are reporting no Medium or High risk Virus threats.

    remember this is ONLY viruses, I have yet to check on Spyware, Adware, keystroke loggers, Trojans, Buffer Overflow Exploits, Browser Hijacking, Spoofing (email), etc.

    Here is specifically what Symantec has to say about current threats:
  • Viruses, Trojan horses, Worms and Macros

  • Security Risks

    • posted by Dennis @ 3:13 AM 1 comments

    Saturday, December 10, 2005

    Basic Virus Info

    1. Most issues with a computer today are not with a "virus" most of todays threats come from a group of threats termed "malware" this includes spyware, keystroke loggers, backdoors, trojans. ect.
    2. Most antivirus vendors also protect you from most of these threats.
    3. If security is absoloutly essential than the computer should never be connected to anything else (ie. no network, internet, removable storage devices) everything is a trade off, what do YOU see as a reasonable risk? connecting a computer to the internet to check your email account places you at risk.
    4. I have seen studies that show most computers are infected by some form of "malware" within four minutes of the first time they are connected to the internet. (this was done by a reputable Virus research lab that was tracking these types of issues)
    5. There are common sense things that can be done to protect yourself.

    I will try to provide a rough outline of how to provide basic security and protection for most home users. (if you have critical information , an attorney with your legal doccuments, classified top secret information, etc. this type of information has no buisness being on your home computer IT IS NOT SECURE!).

    Always turn on automatic updates from microsoft. Have current antivirus installed, most antivirus vendors provide at lease Daily antivirus updates I suggest setting these to update automatically also. If using Win XP turn on the windows firewall (the Win XP firewall is enabled pre OS boot IE. before you can log in the firewall is on.)

    posted by Dennis @ 1:08 PM 0 comments