A Strategy for Blogging More Effectively

Some of you are bound to have noticed a distinct uptick in the amount of blogging we have been doing lately.  My goal is to have one article to share every day.  I am accomplishing this by writing my blog articles in Windows Live Writer.  I write several of them at the same time, up to a week’s worth, and saving them as drafts, and then publish one a day in the morning.  I have also installed a couple of ...

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Fraudulent Wire Transfer Emails Carry Malware

Wire transfer emails from the Habbo Hotel, LinkedIn and UPS are scams that carry a Trojan horse program that can allow the attackers to take over your computer remotely.  The attached .ZIP file contains the executable program.  The full story can be found on Sophos.

Email malware

Scams like these work because people want to believe that the unexpected “gift” of money is real.  Fortunately, the Trojan horse appears to be easily removed by most ...

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Apple Security Via Gatekeeper

Apple’s next operating system, Mountain Lion, is coming with a new feature called Gatekeeper, which is being touted as a way to keep malware from running on your Mac.  Basically, if you have not specifically authorized an application in Gatekeeper, it shouldn’t run, and this would included malware applications.  This seems like a revision of Windows User Account Control (UAC), which is the annoying little box the pops up with a “bonk” sound, graying out your screen, as asking if ...

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Useful Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

Occasionally, you may find that the windows controls are weirdly located off the top of the screen, or for some other reason, launching commands from a menu with the mouse is not going to work.  in those situations, using keyboard shortcuts can help.  These are hold-overs from the old pre mouse DOS and Unix days of computing, when the keyboard was the only input device, but they continue to be part of all operating systems.  Thanks to Tech ...

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Top 5 Android Malware “Apps”

Hey, smartphone users!  It is time to get some malware protection for your smartphone.  According to Sophos, these are the top 5 malware exploits written for the Android platform.

1. Andr/PJApps-C. When Sophos Mobile Security for Android detects an app as Andr/PJApps-C it means that we have identified an app that has been cracked using a publicly available tool. Most commonly these are paid for apps that have been hacked. They are not necessarily always malicious, but are ...

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Did the CIA Infiltrate Microsoft to Deploy Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame?

There is buzz on the Internet that the three very successful cyber-war programs that the US and Israel launched against the Iranian Nuclear (Power?  Weapons?)Program, had be distributed, at least in part, by masquerading as a standard Windows Update.  For this to work, it makes sense that someone would have to be positioned inside Microsoft to assist in that part of the deployment.  There is a longer article on IT World today that is worth the read if ...

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Fake Facebook Emails Send You to Viagraville

Spammers are driving traffic to a Canadian pharmacy website for Viagra and Cialis prescriptions using realistic looking Facebook notifications emails.  Here is an example:

Fake Facebook email

This example is from the Sophos blog.  The basic play hear is for the spammers to earn money from your click-through that is paid by the pharmacy’s affiliate marketing campaign.  In this particular case, there is no harm done except to your time.  The trouble of course ...

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Real Crime vs. Cyber-crime: Which Pays Better?

This post is the result of having read an Ars Technica post commenting on an article in The Scientific Method  that reported on a study undertaken by the British banking industry.  They were looking at the cost of installing security systems relative to the costs of letting the bank robbers just take the money.  Basically, which costs more – security systems or the actual thefts?  It turns out that in England the average back robbery nets about $31,000.   ...

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Crack Your Password? See How Long It Takes At New Site.

I am a regular reader of the Sophos blog because they have so many great articles on computer security.  They recently delved into how to tell if your password is strong enough, and at the end of it all, it really boils down to length – the longer your password, the more secure it is likely to be.  I have been exchanging my 7 and 8 character passwords for new ones that are at least 14 characters long, ...

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