Month: June 2009

Michael Jackson Malware on the Rise

Paul

In the last 24 hours the spammers and scammers have begun to distribute spam with the guise to:

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  • Harvest Email Addresses —  This seems to used to ask users to respond to the email to get “top secret” information about how he died.  Security experts believe this is an attempt to verify email addresses for future spam attempts.   Although it isn’t wise to reply to people you don’t know about it at least has very little risk with your computer for the time being.

  • Fake Codecs and Hidden Trojans —  Seems this is the main thing they are doing right now to get personal computers on their networks.   So you should never visit a site you don’t know about without having an Anti-virus software and A firewall to better protect your system.

  • Extortion Ware — This one is very interesting, and According to Webroot.  You should avoid sites that you don’t know anything about.   With News of anything major you should keep with the trusted news sites.  This one looks to be the bad guy type.

These seem to be a common ploy with scammers and spammers who want to get money from you in one way or another.   I have been watching the Google searches and haven’t seen any malicious sites but I could of missed one here and there.

You should always have an [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] available to help protect your system from these types of attacks.   If you had some kind of protection to better protect your computer.  Remember no one can stop computer infections but you.

Spoof Spam from Skype users

Paul

I got a strange email from Skype:

Click to Enlarge Click to Enlarge

As you can tell this is spam but it got through my spam filters because the spammers are actually spoofing the email address.  Upon further inspection of the headers of the message I have found this came from a Black Hole IANA.org name server.   Then when I did some even more investigation on this, I found that they are seeing more and more of Email Spoofing for Skype. Which if you went to that URL (Websweetness.com) you will not like what you see.   IT is an Adult site but that is besides the point.  I am betting the spammers are trying to fool the spam filters to make sure this get through.  I talked about the [intlink id=”3566″ type=”post”]Skype Bots[/intlink] before and this seems to be another way they are using Skype for there spam campaigns.

Skype is getting to be used by almost everyone who has internet so this is a good bet that people will get even more spam from spammers who are trying to get around the spam filters.  Until Skype fixes this problem, you can go into Email settings and uncheck “Skype can contact me when someone adds me as a contact”.   Although I would like to prevent this totally until they add a way for me to only receive messages from people on my contacts through email this will always be problem until they do that.

Remember if this got through there are a number of things that could also get through such as A Phishing attempt, Scam, or even an Exploit link to have software installed on your system.  So I will always caution people in clicking links they don’t know where they go and not everything from friends are always going to safe.  I would recommend people download some good [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] software to better protect your system and make sure you surf the web a little more safer.

Insanity Run Rampant — Antivirus Pro System (scareware)

Paul

Some of you would want to ask me why I am calling this title an usual title. In fact it is quite simple, I have been at the hospital since early this morning. While I was there I had some intriguing things happen. I was watching a person cruise the internet while they were at work. This is someone who is supposed to answer the phones and such. Then I see this POP UP, this draws my attention. “You SYSTEM Has Spyware”. This was my first thought, Scareware. The Popup said it was for “Antivirus Pro System”.
antivirus-system-pro

Since this was a Hospital computer, I couldn’t get a real screen shot of this but there are plenty examples out there, just like that one above.  Anyways what worries me is how System Admins are allowing employees to surf the web while at work on company time.   It also makes for a bad experience with their family.  It also concerns me about the fact that while that computer is infected some of the patients records could be leaked online.

[ad]If you have this Scareware program, Here is a good explanation on how to remove it.   Hospitals have a duty to protect peoples privacy.   Although I seriously this system had patient records it was being used to keep track of who was in surgery and where they were.

Hospitals should prevent their employees from using the internet and preventing patients or their family’s from using the internet.   While I was there I couldn’t do much but check my email and Maybe watch Twitter using Tweetdeck.   That was how bad the bandwidth was there.  According to some nurses they have a T1 Line.   So you know people are watching movies or other things through the internet.   I also heard from a doctor that people were streaming who were supposed to be at work.

That has been my day,  and am I tired.

I would also suggest people have a f[intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]ree anti-virus software and a Good free Firewall[/intlink] to help prevent this type of scareware in the future.  Remember your the End User and that means only you can prevent this from happening in the first place.  Never go to suspicious sites or URLS that you don’t know where they go.   If you can prevent these types of attacks then you are much better off.

Hulu Days Of Summer are here again

Paul7 Replies

huludaysofsummer09

So we have it here right now, and it starts out really good.   You can watch Stargate SG1 Season 1 through 4 the whole summer.  The last of the Mohicans was the frst movie they brought out for this event.  I rember last years one where we had to guess the coming week.  Some of the ones that I did last year were:

Now I don’t know all that will come this summer but I would of liked to have clues like we did last year. That would of been really fun.  Oh well, I will keep watch on this and see what comes from this.   I also have been using the Hulu Desktop more and more, it seems to work well with [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Cricket modem[/intlink] really well.  For those who have it, I would suggest using the lowest quality of playback for using it.  It really isn’t bad quality for watching shows and such on.   You really don’t have to worry to much about buffering.  Although you should check your settings on the [intlink id=”1009″ type=”post”]player and change them[/intlink].

On a side note this week and next I will be really busy so I don’t know if I will update as much as I have in the past.  This is summer afterall so it might be off and on this summer until everything goes back to normal in the fall.  I will update the blog when I can this summer, so don’t you fret to much!!

Mac Malware on the Rise drive by Downloads

Paul

Photo by Incase Designs Photo by Incase Designs

More and more there seems to be a building trend with Malware writers are developing ways to find both Mac systems and PC Systems. In a diary talking about that one mans journey leads to a site that can detect which system you are on and offer up Malware for that system. He also has some other examples of this on a Mac Trojan in the wild.

Now more and more[intlink id=”2173″ type=”post”] Apple users think they are not vulnerable[/intlink] to the types of antics that the PC users have to deal with day by day.  This however proves they are “WRONG”.   I will keep telling people whether PC or Mac that you need to have [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewalls[/intlink] installed to help protect yourself from be victim to this type of stuff.  Just a last week Sopho’s issued the OSX/Tored-Fam worm to their databases.   Sopho’s even talks about this in detail on their blog.

[ad]Though admittedly it is the people who are searching for Porn that will most likely install this malware.  It however begs the question, hasn’t this been done on the PC systems before?  I have to think this is because the Apple is getting a bigger share of the systems in the world.   For the one reason people still think they will never get Viruses or Worms on there system.   I on the other hand know that this is just the beginning and in the near future Apple will have to recommend to people to have Anti-virus software on your system.  They did that in the past but changed their minds.

Apple’s stance on malware and their systems are one that will be their downfall.   I’ve talked in the past about [intlink id=”694″ type=”post”]Mac\’s getting viruses and other such Malware[/intlink].  Although to Apple’s benefit they do offer ProtectMac AntiVirus for the OSX.   I don’t know how good this is but I do think they need to change their advertising and not make it seem like the Macintosh has can’t get viruses.   I think it would be really funny to see Justin Long in the Mac ads get a Virus, although I don’t think that will happen it is something that I would love to see.