Earlier this week, a friend inconvenienced by a response to an security incident. The IT Services department (of his University) noticed an attack over the weekend, and as a result several user accounts were compromised. Their response? To give everyone two grace logins before their password expired and their account locked. A message was to be displayed on login, to this effect, asking users to change their passwords before they log in again.
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A few weeks ago we transulated the Windows XP licence agreement from legal-jargon to english and have had readers ask specific questions about what they are allowed to do with their copies of Windows XP. Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions.
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The about:blank hijacker installs a browser helper object into Internet Explorer which significantly slows down your internet connection. An infected PC will display a fake directory webpage when IE is opened with the words ‘about:blank’ in the address bar. Here are the instructions to remove it.
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There are many older computers running Windows 98 out there that need repairs. A lot of the old Windows98 errors that occurred were best fixed with a total reinstall of Windows. However, most disks of Win98 are shipped with Internet Explorer 5 which doesn’t work on the Windows update site. This leaves you needing to update your IE, but you can’t because the Windows update page doesn’t work. This article is about how to fix this.
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Several people I know have expressed concerns recently over Internet banking. The news and other media are always running stories on how insecure the Internet is, but lets not forget that it beats the other methods of remote banking by a long shot.
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If you are reading this article and you are on a Windows PC, chances are that your computer is or has been infected with Adware or Spyware at some point. Even if you are technically literate and you have all the prevention software such as Ad-Aware and Spybot for the Adware and Spyware. Norton/McAfee/VET for a virus killer and a physical or software firewall, you are still likely to get infected at some point.
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I was recently talking to a fellow computer technician who owns a bricks and mortar computer shop and has a few techies below him. He told me a story of a very unlikely scenario that occurred when repairing a computer.
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AntiSpyLab (spyware sheriff) is a fake anti-spyware program (very closely related to SpyFalcon) that is designed to fool users into paying for a full version of the program in order to remove a supposed infection which the ‘free version’ put there in the first place. We had done a case study on AntiSpyLab.com about 2 weeks ago, now here are the removal instructions.
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Spyfalcon is a new rogue anti-spyware program that is designed to fool users into paying for a full version of the program in order to remove a supposed infection which the ‘free version’ put there in the first place.
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Do you have one of those USB pendrives? Maybe an MP3 player? How about a USB watch? Or a mobile phone with a USB port? And how many work on a computer with USB ports? Now, of those with your hands raised, how many work with data which could be considered confidential? Now, consider you’re an employer, you run a business working with various forms of sensitive, confidential, perhaps even classified information. Trade secrets, financial reports, medical records, personnel records… Take a look at the sea of people with their hands still raised. These are yet another security threat facing your business.
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