Posts Tagged ‘security’

What is a NAS and do I need one?

In this day and age it is becoming more popular to have more than one computer in the house and as businesses expand they may need to share information between employees.

While this can be done by email or creating a shared folder on a computer, sometimes it is not practical after all you need that computer switched on if you want to access the information and emailed files can become out of date and you end up with data missing.  Also with all this data you really should back it up to you don’t loose anything but buying a USB external hard drive for every computer or even trying to share it around is not practical.

The solution is a NAS which sits on your network and will allow sharing files easy and with less power needed than a computer but can offer almost as much flexibility.  Below are two videos showing you was a NAS is as well as the options it has for your home or office.

Basic description of a NAS

There are a lot of different models and without wanting to seem like I am promoting netgear here is one of their models that is suited both for office use and home use.

If want to see other devices here a re a couple more videos

Now do you think you need one?

This bug has it’s vulnerability in the help and support system.  This bug was first found by a Google engineer on the 10th of June but by the 15th criminals had exploited this with websites that have code to install Trojans, spam tools and viruses to the users computer without them knowing.

As Microsoft have not yet found a fix to this bug the advise is to switch the vulnerable part off, for which it has produced an automated tool which can be found on their website.  Please download and run the files, also make sure your anti virus software is up to date.

While this affect Windows XP it also affect all of the following

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, when used with:
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (32-bit x86)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition for Itanium-Based Systems
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition for Itanium-based Systems
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, when used with:
  • Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3, when used with:
  • Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
  • Microsoft Windows XP Professional

If you want to know more then see their technet blog

A court has ruled that a home owner is responsible for securing his wireless network with a password.  The owner had been away on holiday when someone used his internet connection to download copywrited material from the internet.  While the owner proved he did not download any of the material he could still be fines up to €100 (£86)

The courts said

Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation, while it did not find the owner guilty of actual copyright violation the ruling was that the person must take a degree of responsibility for their connection being used to break the law.

Davis Harris, a British intellectual property barrister said that the verdict was "eccentric"

I don’t think there is any prospect that a UK court would follow that guideline," he told BBC News.

"There is no criminal provision in English law that requires you to secure a wi-fi connection, and currently no liability for the acts of another party if they misuse your connection.

There would be "substantial hurdles" to implementing this judgement in the UK

This just goes to show what having an unsecured wireless network can do and while this might not be enforceable in the UK what would happen if you were not away and the police had to take your computer equipment just to prove you had not committed any crime.

It is always worth while securing your network not only to stop people accessing it but also to stop them being able to view what you are doing as well

I have tweeted about this before but now Google has started to warn about it.  Scareware is where a malicious piece of software disguises itself as a normal program but then demands money from you otherwise your something will happen.

I have always seen the fake anti virus ones that pop up and can not be closed down, they say your computer is infected and unless you pay a set fee to buy this program then they will not remove anything.  The truth is that program is the malicious code and often adds other malicious programs which, even if you did pay, it would not remove them.  The name of this program changes every so often, one was called anti virus 2009.

Anyway back to Google, they scanned 240 million web pages over 13 months, January 2009 to February 2010,  and found that fake anti virus programs accounted for 15% of all malicious software.  Over 11,000 web domains were involved in the distribution of the fake anti virus software.  This attack is mainly aimed at Windows machines and is usually delivered through ADVERTS.  The reason I highlighted adverts is I often get asked if it was because someone in the household had been on ‘adult’ sites, while some will be on adult sites most are now using normal looking website so they can get a greater infection.

Some of you may remember the good old days of dial up internet access and the pearls it brought with viruses.  The dreaded dialler virus where it would disconnect your modem from your ISP and then dial a premium rate number costing up to and sometimes over £1 per minute.  By the time you realised what had happened or you got your phone bill you quite often had to pay several hundred pounds after all dial up was slow and took a while to do anything online and if it had a lot of pictures then you had tine to make a coffee.  Now these people were clever in that they muted your modems speaker and had it done so quickly you just thought that it was taken a bit longer than normal to load a web page.

Well they are back but not for your computer but for your new shiny smart phone.  Security firms have noticed a rise in the amount Trojans known as diallers.  like their older relatives they dial premium rate numbers and you then get hit by a large bill and they get some of that money.

Writing on the CA security blog, Akhil Menon said

it was seeing a "an increasing trend of trojan diallers.

Mr Menon profiled one such virus, called Swapi.B, which sends premium SMS messages.

"The messages sent out are in the typical format to invoke premium services and land the mobile user with heavy mobile bills without the user’s knowledge and consent,"

Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure which makes security software for mobiles, said

it had seen a "handful" of diallers in recent months.

They were popular because they get round one of the big problems facing anyone wanting to make money out of Windows viruses.  PC malware can’t just directly steal money from your machine; it has to jump through hoops like keylogging your credit card number or sending spam.

However, mobile malware can just instantly steal from you by making premium-rate calls or messages.  Some diallers sent messages or rang many different numbers, including legitimate ones.

The trojan can place calls to, say, 100 different premium-rate numbers, only one of which is his own number.  How would you fight this? Shut down all the numbers, including the innocent ones?

A lot of people still think that you only get viruses by visiting porn sites but this is not true.  I have seen computers being infected from normal looking sites and even sites which are legitimate websites but had been hacked into and malicious code inserted but the overall look was not alerted.

If you want to protect your phone from this type of attack then you will need a mobile anti virus program.  F-secure make one and if you search around you will find others as well.