Web Security Tips

The internet has again suffered a hiccup when the untimely death of “The King of Pop”, sent millions to file query’s on the web’s most trusted source for quick searches, Google News. The problem, the system treated the mass query as a DoS attack and barred itself shut, denying the hungry for news of their much loved singer who was suddenly taken from this earth. Google admits the hiccup left people without a properly functioning news service for about an hour while their people tried to address the issue which was indeed legitimate and was supposedly not to be any cause for alarm. Read more »

Still considered to be the largest security threat the world over, human nature defies explanation even with terabyte calculations to predict what people would do and how they would react to stimuli. The internet has suffered a lot mainly due to human error, failure of equipment that was already way past their prime, cables dug up by construction people who weren’t reading the right plans and so on and so forth. many of the internet’s problems has it’s basis on human error, the mistake by a Symantec personnel to release a security testing file without proper security signatures and more. Read more »

The US Government has finally toughened it’s stance and taken the advise of some security experts on how to bets address cyber-security to bolster their ability to deal with the rising threat from the internet that has been plaguing the many government servers and computers deployed all over the globe. They hired a black-hat, Jeff Moss aka the hacker “dark tangent” was hired as an adviser by the government to help with their cyber-security measures so they become more realistic. The government has previously relied upon commercial software for most non-critical network protection that has failed a lot due to high sophistication in attacks, there these low security networks are often used as entry point to more critical networks. Read more »

The internet has changed the lives of all people on earth, getting news out faster than traditional media, reaching out to for social functions and many more. It has also become the battle ground between the people who aim to gain information and those who own them, with the people who protect us from such attacks in the middle. Information is the new standard by which a malicious attack is gauged, or better yet how much information was lost, leached or even leached out of your fingertips even with proper and respectable security software installed. Read more »

Flash drives are the new (and more buffed up) versions of the floppy disks of old. Unfortunately, portable drives are also one of the major contributors to the transfer or viruses, malware, worms, trojans, and all sorts of unpleasant elements from system to system.

Especially when you’re away from your system (which, we’re assuming has adequate virus protection) the next best thing is to utilize online scanners to scan your flash and portable drives.

The good thing about online scanning platforms is that all you need is an internet connection. Virus definitions are also automatically updated by the sites administrators, so you need not worry whether the virus definitions are up to date. The downside is that for slow internet connections, scanning will also take longer, so if you have an 8gb flash drive, for example, it’ll take some time to clean on a slow internet connection.

Conspiracy theorists love the coming of such events, where they predict the end of the world. Or at least the internet as we know it, for the much studied conficker worm is again set to awaken this April Fools which is a couple of months away yet people are beginning to talk about the possible effects of the said internet worm. From malware to panic-ware, conficker has always been in the sights of the many web security experts who are after the makers of one of the longest running worms in the history of the internet (and of course the $250,000 reward Microsoft is offering for anybody who can point the finger at the people who are responsible for the release of the darned thing has nothing to do with it). They know the worm inside out due to reverse engineering but the most intriguing thing about this one is that there is no name or identifying mark on the code which normal hackers always do. They know the code or the revisions come from Korea but that’s it, no trace, no identifying marks to follow.

The malicious scriptwriters out there are churning out what they can to make you click on their site, but according to the report below, a lot of you didn’t fall for their shenanigans:

The investigation, conducted by McAfee(R) SiteAdvisor(TM), studied the five major U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and found that the overall chance of clicking through to a risky site declined by 12.0%. Still, McAfee estimates that consumers click through to risky sites more than 268 million times each month.

“It’s good to see that clicking on search engine results has gotten modestly safer,” said Chris Dixon, director of strategy, McAfee SiteAdvisor. “But when almost one of 12 sponsored links still clicks through to a risky site, there remains significant room for continued improvement.”

With the right combination of increased user knowledge on such sites and quick data updating by leaders of the internet security sector, these malicious sites will never be visited again.

Source

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Many anti virus companies are discovering a new set of exploitation on Microsofts MS08-067. The weakness in the security bulletin which is responsible for the behavior of RPCs or Remote Procedure Calls that are handled in Windows Server service has the workings of becoming a contagious worm. But the companies also cited that, to be able to carry out the exploitation, it needs to team up or packaged with a trijan horse or a bot. This is so because these are the ways the scammers make more money from the code. The worms which are called Rootkit.Win32.KernelBot.dg, W32.Wecorl and a variant of Wecorl are said to be components in building a network of bots. the Gimmiv Trojan is one of the first virus to exploit the MS08-067 vulnerability.

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There is a new spyware fraud that is made to look like the Windows Security Center. It almost is identical to the original except for the red boxes added to it. The malware will force you to purchase the WinDefender 2008 software which happens to be also a phony application. What it will do is just clean up the phony security alerts the spyware has created. So beware of these scams. After all these years, it is somewhat comforting to know that users have finally wised up a bit. Thats why the hackers have gone advenced in their pursuit to fool more people with their much improved tools. The fake security center will continuously block certain pages from openingand display alerts which forces you to buy the security software to get rid of the malicious software that had found its way to the system. You will pay $40 to purchase the application. From now on, pay attention to the interface of security applications in your system so at least you can promptly detect any malware lurking behind your system and posing as a security software.

Online security is one major issue the online community has to deal with. Even your personal computer needs to be secure. Scammers and Phishers are everywhere.
You should and must protect yourself from these computer hackers. Today, a few simple ways can protect you from dangerous internet threats.

Install a trusted Anti-Virus software. Many anti virus applications can be downloaded from the web for free. Or you can always opt to buy the premium type so as to avail full technical support from the vendor.
Update your anti-virus files everyday, if not every half a day. Viruses proliferate by the hundreds in a day that’s why you need to be vigilant in updating the software.
Never Turn off the Firewall. It was created for the purpose. And you need to use that for added protection. This is your first line of defense.
Lastly, browse only thru secure sites. There are a thousand websites poisoned with viruses and worms in the net today.

Protect yourself now.
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