Many of us IT Pros have been holding off installing MS10-015 (977165). Reports of BSOD (blue screen of death) warranted caution.
Turns out those PC’s doing the blue screen typically were infected with Alureon rootkit (aka TDSS, Tidserv, TDL3).
So you want to make sure you are not infected with that rootkit before applying this patch.
Here are some free tools to do that:
Eset is the BMW in Computer security and protecting your PC from internet threats, malware, etc.
Better protection sometimes costs a little more, but for a short time you can use this link to save $20.
There have been a lot of really authentic looking emails coming from spammers with viruses, trojans and malware – usually as an attachment.
Do you know which email to be suspicious of?
Here is a short video I did to warn PC users and help them identify what might be harmful to your PC.
I do not always believe these “best product” ratings because there is the issue, if a magazine, of who the big advertisers are.
Norton Internet Security 2009 is taking some top honors currently, but many of us have such a bad taste in our mouth from Symantec that we are not willing to try it. Allegedly, past problems of the software being a performance hog have been corrected.
No surprise to me, Eset Smart Security is taking some high honors also. Eset has a tendency to find threats that get past some of the other antivirus programs.
Either way, make sure you are protected and that the software is keeping itself up to date. The cost and inconvenience of trying to fix the damage from an infection far outweigh the cost of buying good protection.
In the past I have encouraged people to almost NEVER put up WiFi access with no security (airport, coffee shop can be an exception but COMPLETELY detached from YOUR network), and to at least use WEP encryption which is better than nothing (keeps the neighbors out).
WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was secure for quite some time, but has now been hacked (see details here). This is actually for WPA – TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol).
The hack apparently works every time and within 1 minute.
WPA – AES is still secure for now, the better WPA2 is now the minimum for security if your devices are new enough to support it.
Unfortunately you cannot just go out and buy a new WiFi router, each and every device using the WiFi access point must support the more secure standard.
Check your devices and see what security you can move up to. And do it soon, the hackers will be at this within a couple of weeks from now.
This week I had the distinctly disagreeable task of trying to clean a PC that was infected with primarily one trojan.
However, it attached itself to about every executable file on the system including the i386 directory copies of the XP CD; about 896 files in total that were uncleanable and therefore had to be moved to quarantine.
As you can imagine, the PC does not work too well for the most part. I will have to completely reinstall Windows. This could be avoided, of course, if the user had a USB drive that had a disk image made with Acronis True Image (Save 35% here) at any point before the infection.
The real problem was that this home user had ignored my stipulation to get a quality antivirus program (she did not want me to do it at the time I upgraded her hard drive).
So, she’s been tooling about the internet with computer security software whatsoever.
Please, please make sure you are covered and that the antivirus signatures are up to date.
With most of these internet security suites, it is your choice if you want a software firewall or not and if you want a full complement of antispam, etc. (This is usually the difference between buying just an antivirus program and getting a suite, but some have middle ground).
Here is a list of quality antivirus programs/suites to choose from:
Eset is (currently) said to be the best antivirus. Firewall is optional purchase.
AVG has a free version, but the paid software is an upgrade.
Panda internet security is highly acclaimed.
Trend Micro has been a reliable option over the years for many of my clients on their home PC’s.
ZoneAlarm has always been known for their software firewall product that was pretty much the first of its kind. I have used this product in many small office situations.
I ran across this post at the How-To Geek.
Steganos has been around for a long time and it’s a great way to protect your personal information.
The products they have are secure and yet easy to use. I cannot vouch for the antivirus product, but the data protection and mobile security have been outstanding.
A lot of people with smart phones just don’t realize how at-risk their data is. Windows Mobile especially can be syncing a lot of data to that device that could easily be lost or stolen.
They even have some free software. Check them out today.
I do hope you are not still using Internet Explorer.
I use Firefox, now up to version 3.5, with a lot of cool, free, add-ons. Google Chrome receives a lot of great reviews also.
Watch this short video see what I just “don’t get” about Microsoft’s bugs.
Microsoft, with regards to computer security, reminds me of that 7-Up guy (the one from the Bond movie) saying, about caffeine, that 7-Up “never had it, never will”.
Panda Security Products (Panda Antivirus Pro 2009, Panda Internet Security 2009, Panda Global Protection 2009) are all on sale for 35% off, but only through the special links below!
You can use this link for a comparison of the 3 products:
Panda Security Comparison Chart
But come back here to these SPECIAL DISCOUNT LINKS to buy!
For all 3 of these products, the license allows you to legally use the product on 3 PC’s!.
In a nutshell, all 3 Panda security products provide antivirus, antimalware, personal firewall and phishing protection. Panda Internet Security adds safe internet browsing and backup/restore; Panda Global Protection adds, on top of that, PC optimization and a 2GB online backup system.
Here are the links to save 35% on Panda Security Products:
Buy Panda Antivirus Pro 2009 for $32.47. Save 35%!
There are exploits circulating to hack into GMail accounts via an unpatched security hole that Google says they do not intend to fix.
The attack is via session-riding, a CSRF (pronounce “sea surf”) class attack.
One can complain all you want to, but remember, sometimes you get what you pay for: gmail is free.
(You also need to understand that even if no one else reads your email at GMail, Google does.)
The risk of course is that you might have confidential content in your email or other stored documents; not to mention contacts who have trusted you (whether they thought about that or not) not to put their email address into the hands of spammers.
Those that will exploit these security holes in Google GMail accounts will certainly do so for profit, not just for fun.
Here is Google’s explanation of how to read your emails securely:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/making-security-easier.html
This attack, and Google’s preference not to fix it, is another underscore to the need to surf safely. One way of helping secure your web surfing, especially if you use open WiFi, is GoTrusted secure surfing service. You can get a free trial here.
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