Donna's Security Flash

Announcement: In memory of Donna Buenaventura

We've received the sad news from Donna's husband that she passed away unexpectedly on December 13, 2011.

Donna has been a strong advocate for security and education for many many years and helped guide many in their interest of security on various forums. 

She will be missed by many.

 Her blog will remain as a tribute to her passion for security and her willingness to contribute to others.

(comments have been opened up on this post for a short time)

Categories: Industry Blogs

When will software developers stop offering unnecessary software on software updates?

A friend of mine asked if he should also install Google Chrome when updating DivX Plus Player.  I told him "no, it's not necessary. Uncheck all boxes for Chrome installation and other modification on the browser by Chrome".  I told him also to always do this action to other software updater or installer that will try to install a program that he don't want or require.

Since I have a DivX Plus Player that I haven't update myself (because I disabled automatic checking of DivX updates) and yup, there was an update:.  It is v8.1.3:

When I clicked "Next" button, I'm offered Google Chrome browser, as well.

Just uncheck those guys, unless you want to have Google Chrome, but I doubt you do because if you want it, you know where and how to get it yourself (by visiting Google Chrome website).  It's so sad that some software developers are doing the above "update practices".  It's just an UPDATE but there you are... offering another program that is not necessary to update a program.

Categories: Industry Blogs

Think you know your stuff? Try a quiz!

Bright Hub have lots of new quizzes to test your knowledge.  Check out some of the quizzes :)

Example quizzes in Bright Hub:

Computer Security

• Do You Know Computer Viruses?
• How Safe Is Your Wi-Fi Connection?
• How Secure is Your Computer?
• Test Your Computer Security Skills With the Malware Open Challenge

Windows

• A Quiz for Microsoft Word Professionals
• Are You a Windows Expert? See How Much You Know
• Are You an MS Office Expert? Test Your Knowledge
• Think You Know Your Windows Computer?
• New to Microsoft Word? Find Out How Much You Know!
• So You Think You Can Use Microsoft Excel? A General Knowledge Quiz
• Test Your Microsoft History Knowledge

Mac

• Are You Up to Speed in Lion?
• Test Your Knowledge of Apple History
• Steve Jobs Said What?
• Take the Mac Challenge: How Much Do You Know?
• Test Your Computer Chops with Our Macintosh Guru Quiz
• Test Your Steve Jobs Fandom: A Quiz

iPhone

• Think you Know your iPhone? Take our iPhone quiz & find out
• iPhone Games Quiz
• There's an App For That
• Apple and the iPhone

Good luck or shall I say, hope you'll get perfect score!

Categories: Industry Blogs

Malware Spam: Uniform Traffic Ticket. Aargh.. A bit old spam but not many AV will detect the malware.

Quoted below is an unsolicited email with malware attached:

Subject:  Uniform Traffic Ticket (ID: 31534)

From:  New York State Department of Motor Vehicles

UNIFORM TRAFFIC TICKET (ID:77810),

POLICE AGENCY
NEW YORK STATE POLICE
Local Police Code 3

THE PERSON DESCRIBED ABOVE IS CHARGED AS FOLLOWS
Time: 7:25 AM
Date of Offense: 07/02/2011
IN VIOLATION OF NYS V AND T LAW

4 Description of Violation

SPEED OVER 55 ZONE

TO PLEAD, PRINT OUT THE ENCLOSED TICKET AND SEND IT TO TOWN COURT, CHATAM HALL., PO BOX 117

Screenshot of the spam:

This type of email is NOT new at all because I've seen similar spam last August.  The problem is the following:

• End-users of popular web-based email services that only depend on free virus email scanner aren't always protected from downloading unsafe file.  An example is Yahoo! email which is using Norton Antivirus.  It failed to detect the malware attachment: 

• Less than 50% of virus scanners will detect the malware.  AntiVir, ClamAV, eTrust, PC Tools, PrevX, SUPERAntiSpyware, Symantec, Trend Micro and VirusBuster are among the antivirus vendors that will fail to detect the malware, to date:

Hopefully, people won't fall into executing the Uniform traffic ticket.zip or extract and execute the uniform traffic ticket.exe file.

Or else, they will have to remove Win32/Gamarue.B, a computer worm that can also spread through removable drives e.g. AutoRun virus, communicate to attackers server and download some files to the affected computer.

As you know already, Microsoft found out that their Malicious Software Removal Tool have detected 26.0% malware propagated through USB Autorun, 17.2% of malware have propagated through Network Autorun and 44.8% through user interaction.  More information of malware propagation in Volume 11 of Microsoft Security Intelligence report, released this month. 

The above email is one of the methods that a computer worm infects a computer and then spread to your network (home or office network).

Be very careful when receiving such email especially if you are in New York.  People who don't live in New York or U.S.A have more reasons to delete this type of email.

Categories: Industry Blogs