Happy New Year! Even though it's now 2001, there are two things that occur each and every single New Year's Day - the sharing of hangover remedies and self-improvement resolutions. This year can be different. Instead of nursing your aching head, consider how you can prevent similar aches and pains with your computer. And rather than trying to lose weight again, why not resolve to make your PC a safer place from which to surf? As we finally enter the new millennium (by anyone's definition), consider owning a computer with the same responsibility one takes with automobile ownership. Though there's no license needed to drive the Information Highway, one should carefully observe the safey rules. It is, after all, the smart thing to do. First, get antivirus software. Install it and keep it updated. This need not be expensive. In fact, Free Protection is available. Get a firewall product. Install it and keep it updated. This, too, can be Free. Keep your operating system patched. Just like rotating your tires, a little preventative maintenance can go a long way. Guess what? Free again. And if you use Windows 2000/NT, there's even a free online utility to help make sure you're not leaving your system wide open. Got the hang of it, yet? It's Free, too. In short, there's a lot of really smart people trying to help you be smart, too. Believe me, your data will thank you. It's the easiest resolution you've ever had to keep - and it won't cost you a dime. Drop by the Free Prevention Center today.
December 31, 2000: U.S. government officials from the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) have issued a New Year's DDOS Advisory warning of a potential increase in the number of hacker attacks throughout the New Year's weekend. Of particular concern are Trojans unknowingly residing on unsuspecting users' machines. These "Zombie" machines are then used to participate in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Essentially overwhelming the site with floods of traffic, DDoS attacks were responsible for system interruptions at sites such as Ebay and Yahoo early in 2000. NIPC recommends double checking your network or computer firewall configuration using their "Find DDOS" utility to determine if your network or computer has been victimized by Trojans commonly used in DDoS attacks.
December 30, 2000: Leaving Christmas greetings behind, a new virus is being monitored by Computer Associates. According to CAI, this virus, dubbed VBS/Tqll-A, installs a Trojan on the infected user's machine and then attempts to download a file, Teen.exe. Apparently, the infection is received via email, arriving as a message with a subject line of: "New Year !" and a message body reading "Wow Happy New Year !". The attachment name under which this virus has been traveling is: "happynewyear.txt.vbs". Users are cautioned to not open unnecessary attachments or any attachments received unexpectely, even from known sources.
December 29, 2000: As the New Year rapidly approaches, it's a great time to reflect and resolve. With that spirit in mind, let's consider the important security issues we face in the upcoming year and ways in which we can better confront them. Today's resolution will be to backup important files. As viruses become increasingly sophisticated, the success of their spread does not rely on going unnoticed. Email can accomplish worldwide exposure in mere hours. Thus, overwriting files or corrupting data is becoming a more common malicious side affect. Since files damaged by viruses are irreparable, the only way to protect important information is to make a copy of it that can be restored in the event of a viral - or hardware - disaster. Fortunately, About.com guide Ed Bott has a plan so simple, you can accomplish backups in as little as ten minutes a week. This is one resolution you must keep! Check out Ed's Painless Backup Strategy today.
December 28, 2000: Love is often equated with the holiday season and this year is no exception. Sadly, the form of love many are receiving damages computer files and disconnects network drives. Affecting Windows 9x and NT systems with Windows Scripting Host (WSH) enabled, a variant of LoveLetter overwrites certain files with viral code and changes the extension of the file to .VBS. According to Trend Micro, VBS/LoveLetter.BE damages files with the extensions: "vbs", "vbe", "js", "zip", "css", "doc", "xls", "htm", "jpg", "gif", "mp3", or "mdi". FunLove, another virus widely circulated this season, is reported by F-Secure as a Windows 9x/NT Portable Executable (PE EXE) infector. FunLove patches the NTLDR and WINNT\System32\ntoskrnl.exe, rendering both files unrecoverable.
Speaking of love, shareholders of Network Associates (NAI), makers of McAfee VirusScan, won't have much to feel amorous about with 4th quarter losses estimated in excess of $130 million dollars. In a press release, NAI announced the preliminary 4th quarter results and projected senior leadership changes, including Bill Larson, President, Peter Watkins, CEO, and Prabhat Goyal, CFO.
December 27, 2000: According to MessageLabs, the Prolin virus leads the list of emails carrying viral attachments. Of course, simply because an email has an infected attachment doesn't mean the recipient will actually open it and become infected. Trend Micro provides actual infection statistics in their World Virus Tracking Center. Trend's data depicts the MTX virus as the number one active infector. MTX is received as an email attachment. Since the email itself has no subject line and no message text, one has to wonder why so many are enticed into opening such a suspiciously received attachment. Can it be that filenames such as "Me_nude.avi.pif", "I_am_sorry.DOC.pif", and "Free_xxx_sites.txt.pif" prove too compelling to delete without peeking? Any email attachment received unexpectedly should be treated with caution - regardless of the sender. An email attachment that arrives with no subject line and no message text should never be opened without first confirming with the sender that it was intended.
Removing MTX is no easy task. At least one file, WSOCK32.DLL, will suffer irreparable damage and will have to be restored from backup. For help removing MTX, visit the MTX Help Center.
December 26, 2000: As Christmas day gives over to after-Christmas bill paying, consumers would be wise to keep a close eye on their credit card statements. In a recent MSNBC news report, "Massive credit heist, fraud reported", Bob Sullivan reported that three million credit card numbers may have been compromised in addition to the millions potentially affected by the Egghead crack and CreditCards.com heist. In an attempt to pass unnoticed, the individual charges are small, ranging from five to ten dollars. Despite the small amounts, in one such scam at least $30 million was obtained before credit card authorities became suspicious.
December 25, 2000:Merry Christmas! A welcome greeting in any language, unless received as Navidad.exe. This virus makes a buggy entry to the registry that renders executable files incapable of running. This means, even if you have antivirus software, you won’t be able to run it to clean up the infection. With a virus such as Navidad, prevention becomes the key. Fortunately, the folks at F-Secure have created a fix to correct the damage and allow other executables to run. Read about and download the fix at: http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/navidad.htm
If you’re infected and use the fix, remember it only corrects the registry setting. You’ll still need to run antivirus software to remove the virus from your system. Check out the Free Protection links or the Prevention Center for cost-effective (a.k.a. free) means of protecting your system from viruses.
December 24, 2000: Instead of a jolly HoHoHo from Santa, many users are getting messages from HaHaHa at Sexyfun.net. Beware this not-so-jolly greeting – it comes packaged with the Hybris virus. Despite having been in the wild for two months, incidents of Hybris seem to be on the increase.
Received in various languages, the text of the email appears to be a provocative lead-in to a story about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The only thing provocative about the attachment, however, is that it will infect your system and spawn even more copies of itself. The attachments have a variety of names. According to reports from readers, the most common of these are joke.exe and dwarf4you.exe.
A great many other attachment names, most rather explicit, are also associated with Hybris. If you receive an attachment unexpectedly, regardless of the source, do not open it. Contact the sender via a separate email to determine if they intended to send it. Additionally, scan all attachments with antivirus software should you decide to open them. If you want to determine whether an attachment you received has been associated with a virus, visit the Attachment Center. Remember, though, that any executable has the potential to harbor a virus infection and all should be treated with caution.
December 23, 2000: As if worries of the cross-infected Kriz virus and Bymer worm weren't enough, there's another old virus threatening to make a comeback. Prilissa.Q overwrites the contents of the autoexec.bat file on December 25th to reformat infected users' hard drives the next time the system is started. Like Melissa, Prilissa mass-mails itself to the first 50 addresses in an infected users' address book. Prilissa infects Windows 32-bit operating systems. Readers can track Prilissa's prevalency via MessageLabs ThreatList. To scan your system for viruses and remove any found, visit the Prevention Center where you can also take advantage of free security tools to help make your holiday safer.
December 22, 2000: Just when we should be gathering with friends and toasting their health, we have new concerns about the health of our computers. Antivirus vendors are warning about a possible resurgence of last year’s holiday wrecker, the Kriz virus. Even worse, reports indicate that Kriz has cross-infected an infectious email worm, Bymer. The combination of the two could mean a widespread infection of a virus that destroys your computer files on Christmas day.
Kriz infects portable executable (PE EXE) files with EXE or SCR extensions. On December 25th, Kriz invokes its wrath by erasing CMOS memory and overwriting data in all files. Like CIH, Kriz tries to destroy the infected system's Flash BIOS. If the virus has cross-infected a worm, such as Bymer, the virus could spread rapidly. Bymer infects Windows 95/98 machines with open files shares.
Prevention: If you don’t have antivirus protection on your system, buy yourself an early Christmas present. Your data, and your computer, will thank you. Windows users can check out the Windows Download Center. Mac gurus can visit the Macintosh Resource Center. Broke after buying everyone else's present? Visit the Free Protection Center. For quick, easy, and free security solutions to find out it your system is vulnerable, visit the Prevention Center.
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