Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Security

  • Phishing – Bank of the West Notice take two… (deeper sigh)

    Well, I’m trying. The first post I did on the Bank of the West phishing email I was somewhat down because there are people in the world that do phishing scams. Now I’m down because the company that has the site on it’s servers has not responded and around 48 hours after initially reporting it to them, it is still there. Unfortunately it looks like a LARGE number of people have given account information. Again, I can’t be certain, but it appears that way. (more…)

  • USB security vulnerability

    Just read this over at eweek…. USB devices can post a security risk.
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  • Bank of the west notice (sigh)

    Well, how long ago was I talking about phishing attacks? Just a few posts back it seems and in my inbox this evening was the above subject line. It’s almost funny, since I don’t actually HAVE an account with Bank of the West, but since I was feeling a bit curious I thought I’d pick it apart, see where it came from and where the site was hosted. (more…)

  • Grisoft AVG Antivirus and other antivirus alternatives

    Okay, so we know that having an antivirus scanner on a windows desktop is VERY necessary. Especially if it’s a system that has any contact with the outside world. So, what to choose. Well, of course there’s Symantec Norton Antivirus, there’s McAfee and a few other less well known (Kaspersky, F-Prot, Innoculate-IT) I’m rather fond of Grisoft’s AVG Antivirus though. Here are a number of reasons (more…)

  • Virus Hoaxes are almost as bad as real viruses

    I suspect you’ve probably got a fair share of these, I know I pull my hair out everytime I see someone forward one to their closest 400 friends and include me. Virus warnings. Viruses, are something that I deal with cleaning up quite a bit and I guess people try to help, but most of the time circulated virus warnings through email are hoaxes. I have seen one in particular crop up every now and then that directs the user to find and delete a file on the drive which is actually a harmless file distributed with Windows.

    But how to tell the wheat from the chaff so to speak?
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  • Google as a tool for crackers

    Google is a search tool which I use literally every day. Sometimes it’s multiple times per day. Sometimes I can’t imagine how I would function without being able to do a quick google search. There are some features that I don’t often use and in some ways have promised myself to use more in an attempt to hone in on just that piece of information I’m looking for, but those features can also be turned against a site owner. (more…)

  • More details on php exploit from last week

    Ok. I have a bit of time that I can sit down and get a little more detailed on what specifically happened late last week that shut the site down for a couple days.
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  • Sending Virus or Spam Abuse reports

    It occured to me that I may not have brought things to a neat conclusion on the post earlier about tracking email header data. I did make reference to sending an abuse report. Here’s an attempt to clear up a few things that might still be fuzzy.
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  • Modern Computer Viruses are almost NEVER from whom they claim to be from

    This is one that I’ve probably talked about before, but it’s worth rehashing because of a call I had this afternoon. A customer had been receiving phone calls and email messages from folks asking that he stop sending them a virus. Essentially all of the viruses were claiming to be from his email address and he was very concerned that his system had been compromised.

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