General

I recently read an article on Tech Republic that described how the cybersecurity firm Norse Corporation is using a network of 80 million honeypots to track malicious activity on the web.  A honeypot is a special computer or server that has been placed on the Internet to attract attackers, like Winnie-the-Pooh to honey.  80 million honeypots are going to track a lot of data, over 130 terabytes per day.  This information is displayed on a Continue Reading →

Finally some good news, this time from Tech Republic.  Recently an independent security lab, AV-Test, put seventeen popular anti-malware applications through their paces, specifically looking for how well the applications could detect and remove malware on systems that were already infected.  Anti-malware applications also prevent malware from installing through signature based and behavioral detection, but this test focused on whether the apps would work on a computer where malware had already been installed. 

The testers used 30 malware ...

Stumbled across an article on Tech Dirt that made a great visual statement about how technology has made us “less social.”  Or has it?  Looks like the only thing that has changed in 100 years is the medium.  Anyway, take a look at these photos.  Looks like we have been anti-social long before the smartphone “killed conversation.”

I just read a couple of articles about wireless networking that ought to be concerning to you – if you are one of the 75% who think unsecured public Wi-Fi systems are safe to use for any purpose.  Because, if you think so, you are wrong!

In a survey that was ...

Hey, it happens.  Sophos has a great article giving the step by step you need to recover from this without reinstalling everything from scratch.  Everything below is from Sophos.  Thanks, guys.

Microsoft has published a workaround that will get you up and running again, but it involves a fair amount of fiddling.
You need to:

1. Boot from installation media or go into Recovery Mode.
2. Delete the crash-triggering file %WINDOWS%system32fntcache.dat.
3. Reboot normally, which should now succeed.
4. Save the registry key ...

I’ve read about this a few places and decided to alert my readers, too.  Security firms FireEye and Fox-IT have a way to possibly decrypt your affected files, if you still have them, without paying the ransom.  In order to check, go to https://www.decryptcryptolocker.com and submit one of your encrypted files for possible decryption.  This is accomplished by running the file through all of the captured private decryption keys that were recovered during Operation Tovar, when some of the ...

The picture above is supposed to be how the new user interface of Windows 9 is going to look.  Gratefully, it looks like Microsoft has finally realized the colossal blunder it made when it removed the Start Menu in Windows 8 and 8.1.  To me it looks like the right column has been absorbed by the Start Screen apps, which is not my favorite solution, I would rather have ...

Many homes an businesses are using wireless networking  to connect their computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, printers, televisions, DVD and DVR players and other smart devices and appliances to the local household or business network, and to the larger Internet beyond.  Wireless networking devices such as wireless routers and access points are ...