“Hey, I have this hilarious video of you dancing. Your face is so red. You should check it out!” If you’ve received a message like that through a Facebook or MySpace friend, you may have been exposed to the “Koobface” virus. Here’s what’s going on…
Hackers have now made a new cozy home for themselves on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Disguised as one of your friends, they’ll send you a direct message with a video link attached. If you click on the link, you’re prompted to update your Flash player to see the video, and therein lies the virus, cloaked in a “flash_player.exe” file. Once installed, this worm transforms your computer into a Zombie machine as part of a botnet (a network of computers that are controlled and used by the originator of the worm for unscrupulous purposes).
Are You Really At Risk?
Unless you are aware of these scams, it is very easy to become infected. Some of the direct messages and tweets have titles that are very deceptive. Some of the more common messages will say, “Here’s the video I mentioned…”, or “LOL,” or “My friend caught you on hidden cam,” or “My home video” These messages are followed by a link directing you to a page to watch the video. These seemingly harmless messages can quickly infect your entire office network, allowing hackers a free pass in. In addition, they can block you from accessing important security updates, making your network even more susceptible to hacker attacks. In some cases, they use their free access to your computer to steal bank account information, credit card numbers, social security numbers and other confidential data.
How To Protect Yourself
Awareness is the first step to protecting yourself. Make a copy of this newsletter and hand it out to all your coworkers and your friends and family so they don’t get infected or infect you. Next, follow these three simple steps:
1. Frequently Change Your Password And Don’t Use Easy To Guess Combinations. I know, it’s a pain in the neck to change your password frequently, especially when you have dozens to keep track of. But this really is one of the best ways to avoid compromising your account on social media sites. Additionally, don’t use simple passwords like “password” or “123abc.” Include lower case and capital letters, as well as numbers. If a hacker is trying to crack your password and you never change it (or if it’s super easy to guess), you make your account a prime target.
2. Avoid Downloads. Avoid downloading anything from messages on Twitter or Facebook, even if the message is from someone you know. As a general rule, never download any file if you are not 100% certain it is secure and virus free.
3. Get A Beefy Firewall. If you or your employees are using any social media sites for personal or business connections, a strong firewall will protect you from getting infected. That way, even if you or your staff inadvertently opens a dangerous message from one of these sites, your firewall can prevent it from bringing your whole network to a grinding halt.
Young ‘coach’ a media sensation
October 4th, 2009Sat Oct 03, 2009 9:45 am EDT
How 4-year-old boy mastered ‘Miracle’ speech in YouTube hit
By Greg Wyshynski
Jim Sacco estimates that his son Josh has watched “Miracle,” the film about the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team’s legendary upset of the Soviets, nearly 150 times. Apparently, the movie has made quite an impression on the young fan.
Nicknamed “Rizzo” after the gold medal-winning team’s captain Mike Eruzione, Josh sparked an Internet sensation this week when his hilarious, inspirational and eerily impeccable interpretation of actor Kurt Russell’s locker room speech as Coach Herb Brooks went viral — spreading everywhere from blogs to USA Today to the “Ellen” show.
No professional coaching. No fancy editing. No script, because Rizzo hasn’t learned to read yet — he was just 4 years old when his father filmed the speech earlier this year, making it all the more remarkable.
If you haven’t seen this clip yet, you’ve not seen anything like it before:
You Have GOT To See/Hear This!!
May 31st, 2009This is an Italian version of our America’s got talent.
These three kids:
Piero Barone – 15 yr old
Ignazio Boschetto – 14 yr old
Gianluca Ginoble – 14 yr old
Will leave you speechless and blow you away.
It’s Been a Few Weeks
May 31st, 2009The last blog post was April 7th. Suffice it to say the past few weeks have been “crazy busy” and full of lots of positive changes. The newsletters have been consistently coming out since February (I just realized I didn’t post May’s newsletter so here is a link to it SMB May Newsletter). The feedback has been positive and people enjoy the stories. This month we added a new feature, a client spotlight. The Connecticut Audubon Society is our June story.
Our intent is to be more consistent with the blog and other “online” methods of communicating (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc). This is a valuable way to stay in touch and keep you informed.
There will be a few more posts today including the June newsletter, stay tuned.
Thanks
Prevent Blindness Tristate Healthy Eyes for Kids News Clip
April 7th, 2009We take great pride in supporting worthy causes and our client family. Our support comes in many ways from participating in their events to deeply discounting our services. When our friends and clients are recognized we also like to promote their efforts. Please click the link below to see (no pun intended) the good works that Prevent Blindness Tristate is doing.
Thank you Kathryn for sharing.
We Have A Winner for April
April 6th, 2009The first person to answer this months Technology Times Trivia Challenge was…………. Cheryl Blaisdell of Prevent Blindness Tristate in New Haven.
Congratulations Cheryl!
Cheryl will get a $20 Starbucks card.
Here is the Trivia Challenge Question
In honor of National Car Collector Month…
What year was the Corvette first introduced?
a) 1943 b) 1953 c) 1963 d) 1973
Last-minute Conficker survival guide
March 31st, 2009Reprinted from Yahoo Tech
Tue Mar 31, 2009 1:42PM EDT
See Comments (1610)
Buzz up!on Yahoo!
Tomorrow — April 1 — is D-Day for Conficker, as whatever nasty payload it’s packing is currently set to activate. What happens come midnight is a mystery: Will it turn the millions of infected computers into spam-sending zombie robots? Or will it start capturing everything you type — passwords, credit card numbers, etc. — and send that information back to its masters?
No one knows, but we’ll probably find out soon.
Or not. As Slate notes, Conficker is scheduled to go “live” on April 1, but whoever’s controlling it could choose not to wreak havoc but instead do absolutely nothing, waiting for a time when there’s less heat. They can do this because the way Conficker is designed is extremely clever: Rather than containing a list of specific, static instructions, Conficker reaches out to the web to receive updated marching orders via a huge list of websites it creates. Conficker.C — the latest bad boy — will start checking 50,000 different semi-randomly-generated sites a day looking for instructions, so there’s no way to shut down all of them. If just one of those sites goes live with legitimate instructions, Conficker keeps on trucking.
Conficker’s a nasty little worm that takes serious efforts to bypass your security defenses, but you aren’t without some tools in your arsenal to protect yourself.
Your first step should be the tools you already have: Windows Update, to make sure your computer is fully patched, and your current antivirus software, to make sure anything that slips through the cracks is caught.
But if Conficker’s already on your machine, it may bypass certain subsystems and updating Windows and your antivirus at this point may not work. If you are worried about anything being amiss — try booting into Safe Mode, which Conficker prevents, to check — you should run a specialized tool to get rid of Conficker.
Microsoft offers a web-based scanner (note that some users have reported it crashed their machines; I had no trouble with it), so you might try one of these downloadable options instead: Symantec’s Conficker (aka Downadup) tool, Trend Micro’s Cleanup Engine, or Malwarebytes. Conficker may prevent your machine from accessing any of these websites, so you may have to download these tools from a known non-infected computer if you need them. Follow the instructions given on each site to run them successfully. (Also note: None of these tools should harm your computer if you don’t have Conficker.)
As a final safety note, all users — whether they’re worried about an infection or know for sure they’re clean — are also wise to make a full data backup today.
What won’t work? Turning your PC off tonight and back on on April 2 will not protect you from the worm (sorry to the dozens of people who wrote me asking if this would do the trick). Temporarily disconnecting your computer from the web won’t help if the malware is already on your machine — it will simply activate once you connect again. Changing the date on your PC will likely have no helpful effect, either. And yes, Macs are immune this time out. Follow the above instructions to detect and remove the worm.
The 3 Scariest Threats To Small Business Networks
March 29th, 2009While spam, pop-ups, and hackers are a real threat to any small business network, there are 3 security measures that you should be focusing on FIRST before you do anything else…
Worry About E-mail Attachments, Not Spam
Sure, spam is annoying and wastes your time, but the REAL danger with spam is in the attachments. Viruses and worms are malicious programs that are spread primarily through cleverly disguised attachments to messages that trick you (or your employees) into opening them.
Another huge threat is phishing e-mails that trick the user by appearing to be legitimate e-mails from your bank, eBay, or other password-protected entity.
Here are 2 things you must have in place to avoid this nightmare:
Keep your anti-virus up to date and enabled. Okay, this sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not uncommon for an employee to disable their anti-virus software unbeknownst to you. Which brings us to #2…
Train employees on what they are (and aren’t) permitted to do with the company’s computer, e-mail, Internet access, etc. One thing that should be on the list is that they should NEVER open suspicious attachments or respond to phishing e-mails. We highly recommend creating an AUP (acceptable use policy) to teach your staff what NOT to do.
Put monitoring software in place to not only maintain the health of employees’ desktops, but also to automatically “police” employees from accidentally (or intentionally) visiting a phishing web site, downloading a virus, or visiting questionable web sites and content online.
Fear Downloads Before Pop-Ups
Did you know that most computers and networks get infected with viruses because the user actually invited the threat in by downloading a file (screen saver, music file, PDF document, pictures, etc.).?
Again, this comes down to training the staff on what they can and cannot do with your computer network; but the best way to avoid this from happening is to remove the temptation by installing monitoring software that will prevent employees from downloading unsavory items to YOUR network. We also recommend installing and maintaining a good firewall, which will block Internet traffic to and from dangerous sites.
Lose Sleep Over Backups Before Hackers
You are more likely to lose data from hardware failure, accidental deletion (human error), flood, fire, natural disaster or software corruption than a hacker. Sure, you should do everything to keep hackers out of your network, but not backing up your data to a remote location is crazy. At a minimum, you should have an onsite AND offsite copy of your data, and you should be testing your data backups regularly to make sure your data CAN be restored in the event of an emergency.
What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You