Category: Security

You’ve got hacked thanks to Twitter : Don’t “email me at”

Paul

I was reading a blog post about Spammers Harvesting Sorrow From Twitter.

Something came to my mind, so I did a little research and a lot of thinking and it finally came to me. It is easy for someone to find your email and use it for there own means. There are several different scenarios I can come up with:

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  • Impersonating someone you know —  It is quite simple to find out who we know and who we follow.  You can always find someone who you don’t know the email address of and make it seem like your them to get even more information from the person.

  • Receiving Viruses, Trojans, or worms —   Although if you have a good Anti-virus this one won’t be getting to you but  according to ESET : 10 percent of computer users didn’t know if they had anti-virusware installed. This means that there are going to be some success for malware authors to send out a virus to every who twitters there email address and still have success.

  • Try to guess your password —  If they have your email address, which is almost like your SSN in some respects, they could go to Facebook and try to get into your account by doing a Dictionary attack or a Brute Force Attack.  They may even try to hack into your email address just to get access to all the other accounts.

I am sure I am going to miss others that could possibly happen but this isn’t about what could happen this is about ways to prevent this type of stuff.   Chris Pirillo seems to think that if we use the “AT” and “dot” in place of the real things that no Bot would be able to figure that.   I say no because this is the easiest thing for a bot to do is to copy everything after the “Email me at”  and put it in a text file.   Then the person harvesting the email address would just have to go through and find all them that have the “dot” and “at” and change them to what they should be.  I have been watching the search terms for the last few hours and it seems there is a new person posting there email address every 5 minutes or so.  Have you don’t it in the past?

In short, if you want someone to email you it is always best just to send a Direct message to them so no other eyes can see it.  I’d also suggest installing some [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Free Anti-virus and Firewalls[/intlink] if you haven’t already to better help your protect your personal information.  Remember only you can prevent from getting your personal information stolen.

Microsoft to Release One Crictical update for Tuesday

Paul

Microsoft has release the information for May’s Patch Tuesday and it looks like there is one major update for Power point:

ms09patchtuesday1

The Affected software is MS Office 2000, MS office Xp, MS Office 2003, Ms Office 2007, Power point viewer, and MS compatibility pack for Word, Excel, and Power point 2007.

[ad]What will be coming out for Tuesday is as Followers for Non-security Releated:

  • Windows PowerShell 1.0 for Windows Vista (KB928439)

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Family Update (KB951847)

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (KB867460)

  • Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – May 2009 (KB890830)/Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – May 2009 (KB890830) – Internet Explorer Version

  • Update for Windows Mail Junk E-mail Filter [May 2009] (KB905866)

Although some of this is usual like the Malicious software removal tool, and Windows Junke e-mail filter, we won’t know what else will be released until Tuesday.  Some of the updates will be minor like the Powershell, I am guessing tis will help get ready for SP2, and the SP1 for the .NET framwork also looks to be getting ready for SP2.  So I will keep you updated if i find out what else is released on Tuesday!

Miketechshow Listener Roundtable : #242 Backups

Paul

We had a great time talking about backing up our system. On a side note, I’d like to tell people that During the Round table, I was restoring my system due to a major network issue. The system wouldn’t stay connected at all to my network or my [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]USB A600 Cricket Modem[/intlink].  I used the A600 Modem during the podcast [intlink id=”2601″ type=”post”]with Skype[/intlink], so the quality isn’t as good as it should but that is due to two different factors.  One I had a cheap headset and two the bandwidth limitations.  This however shows that this is possible and works really well.  I also used the [intlink id=”3387″ type=”post”]Antenna[/intlink] for the Skype meeting.   It actually seems like a stable connection.   Although Mike has told us in his email this might be the last Round Table, so if you want this to continue you can either email him or twitter him telling him you want to keep seeing these podcasts.  I also talk about [intlink id=”2646″ type=”post”]Roboform[/intlink] and how I make sure the passwords are backed up.   We did talk about making sure to test our backups, so we know if the backup process works.   I have to say my backup procedure was without doubt working for me.   Even though I had some issues with Vista security updates after the restore, my restore to laptop didn’t take more than an hour to get the programs that I wanted back on the system.
Mike Tech Show Listener Roundtable #242 Backups

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Adobe PDF Zero Day Warnings : Experts agree

Paul

All the Security experts online are talking about The 2 Zero Day Adobe Vulnerabilities:

[ad#cricket-right-ez]As you can see this seems to be one of those Adobe problems we had in the past with [intlink id=”2963″ type=”post”]Javascript[/intlink].   They seem to be having a major problem with Javascript vulnerability and the old saying is to just to disable Javascript in PDF’S again.   Adobe is calling this a Potential Adobe Reader issue and is suggesting that the users disable Javascript until this is fixed with a security update.

This is mostly affect the corporate world more than the private sector because of the fact corporate world will use PDF by sending them through emails.   I suggest installing another reader and these are all free.

Be advised the vulnerabilities affects Linux, Windows, and Macintosh systems.  This will most likely mean that even Macintoshes could be used to [intlink id=”2173″ type=”post”]create even more botnets[/intlink] and will need to disable there Javascript until this issue is fixed or maybe they would like to find another reader themselves.  This also goes for Linux users but I have not heard of anything in the wild yet.

Don’t forget to install some [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]free Anti-virus and Free Firewalls[/intlink] to help protect your system from becoming a botnet.