Security

Ever submit a problem and have the vendor flat out say “It’s not our problem?” It’s more than a little annoying in this day and age. I really thought that the PC universe had evolved beyond that kind of blatant BS. Boy, was I wrong!

All of us who have used computers at work or at home for any length of time have encountered the maddening experience of losing or accidentally deleting a file that we need. Incidentally, data recovery is a necessity of modern life.
Luckily, all modern operating systems have a built in automatic data recovery utility. But, what […]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday ratified the first and only international treaty designed exclusively to combat computer crime. You can read the full text of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime here.
What does this mean? Well, a lot of things. But all told, it means law enforcement officials from around the world will have […]

Tell me what you think, share what you know… In large part, I help catch bad guys for a living. So I have my own perspective and base of experience, but please share yours.
You may already be familiar with the term “phishing” and possibly you have a good idea of what it means. If you’re […]

If you have an email account, you know about all the scam emails you get. Scammers are getting braver and using the IRS name in their new tactics.
The IRS has begun warning taxpayers that it is seeing a surge in tax scam emails. Many of the emails even have the hubris to use the IRS […]

Looks like a new variant of an old virus is making the rounds.
I got an email tonight in my personal email account that pretended to be from Microsoft and which contained a virus in an attached ZIP file. The attachment was called “Microsoft SMS Manager.zip” and contains two files - which are packaged as a […]

The headline reads: “Credit card security rules to get update.”
I see that and I think to myself, “Hey, cool.”
Then I read the story.
What it should have said: “Credit card security rules that make perfect sense and protect your identity are about to be flushed right down the toilet because companies say it’s too hard.”
Now, that’s […]

The beauty of a Mac is I can investigate what phishing e-mail I’ve just been sent has in store for me, safely. In this case, I received an e-mail “from” 123Greetings.com (see the full resolution screen capture of the message) that said, “A friend has sent you an ecard from 123Greetings.com.” The card […]

Can’t change your desktop background? Little orange triangle in your system tray telling that you have an infection, and for $29.99 they can fix it? New icons for SpyAxe on your desktop? Desktop background says you have a spyware infection or has an image of a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death)? If you answer yes […]

Baseline is stating the obvious in its latest article of warning: Unpatched old software is a security hazard to your computer. Windows or Mac or Linux or any other operating system. Security updates are released for the sole reason of patching holes that open your computer to vulnerabilities. Yet many won’t update Firefox or QuickTime […]

Hey party people, if you’re still in the dark, dark ages and running Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, or Windows ME, then Microsoft has a warning for you. Next time you go to Windows Update, you’ll be greeted with a message that Windows 95 users have seen for years: Sorry, Charlie, we won’t support […]

Email Spam. Most of us deal with it every day. We hate it, and we wish it would just go away. But it won’t, so we might as well learn as much about it as we can so we can deal with it in an intelligent manner (while maintaining our sanity amid the frustration)! Dina […]

By this time, most of you should know that the job hunting sites are fertile ground for identity theft. The thieves pose as companies looking for help in order to gain access to personal info on applicants. This is a double disaster for those poor people: they’ve lost their jobs and now they have their […]

I work in the security field (we build anti-fraud and authentication software and services for financial services and electronic commerce companies like banks, etc). Recently I’ve been asked by a significant number of people why certain banks are being phished in such large volumes. Now, while I don’t write about specific financial institutions or security […]

I have noticed in my travels that many people have a problem with which they are unable to view secure sites, such as Internet banking, e-mail, online stores, etc. after using Norton Internet Security for a while. The reason for your inability to view secure sites is that the NIS firewall becomes corrupted and blocks […]

There are two types of firewalls available to the home computer user.
A hardware firewall is a device that sits between your computer and the Internet. At home, for example, it could reside on a broadband router, which is used to share your Internet connection with a number of computers. One of the advantages of […]

A router is a computer device that receives or forwards data packets to and from the Internet towards a destination in the process called routing. A router is the essential component of the computer networking that enables any sent data to arrive at the right destination.
As an illustration, imagine that the Internet is the world […]

Microsoft is now officially in Beta 2 of its AntiSpyware application complete with a new name: Windows Defender. Having used Microsoft’s software protection since its buyout of Giant Software (the original author of the program), I’ve seen very little changes other than forced software updates due to license expiration. Now I see an entire new […]

Edmund X. DeJesus of SearchSecurity.com writes:
A recent signature file for the beta version of Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware incorrectly identifies a registry key of Symantec antivirus software. Users who remove the identified key render the antivirus software inoperable. Reinstallation of the Symantec software may be necessary.
The Windows AntiSpyware Beta 1 signature 5805, which was released […]

Matthew Murphy has reported a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.
The vulnerability is caused due to error in the timing of drag-and-drop events when certain objects not derived from HTML documents (e.g. files within a folder view) are dragged. This race condition can be exploited […]