Posts Tagged ‘Computer virus’

Fake Security Software Threatens Computers

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
Not Always What It Seems

Not Always What It Seems

According to software company Symantec, tens of millions of computers across the U.S. are infected with scam security software that their owners may have purchased, but which only leave them more vulnerable. The owners are duped into providing their credit card and other personal information when a fake security alert pops up as the computer user accesses a legitimate website. The alert claims to have found a virus and offers to correct it with security software. In fact, the alerts are established by very sophisticated cyber-thieves. Symantec found 250 varieties of scam security software with names that appear legitimate, such as “Antivirus 2010” and “SpywareGuard 2008”. Actually, I found one such infection on my parents’ computer identified as “antivirus.exe”. About 43 million downloads of the scam software were attempted in the past year, but it is unknown how many succeeded. To increase their reach, the cyber-thieves recruit middlemen who earn between one and 55 cents each time a person downloads the software. One such site, which is now closed, TrafficConverter.biz, reported that its leading affiliates earned as much as $332,000 monthly for selling scam security software. The refined affiliate sales model is very sophisticated and can confound your small business security efforts. Educate your employees not to click on any such alerts and only purchase security software from a trusted source, not one that is pushed out to you from the web.

Global Virus Spread

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Globally Connected, in the Worst Way

Globally Connected, in the Worst Way

More than one million, and possibly as many as ten million, personal computers have been infected with the Conficker virus. The virus has claimed victims from the German military, computer networks in the British and French Air Forces and teaching hospitals in England. Conficker is particularly virulent because once it spreads it disables infected computers from being cleaned out, while searching nearby serves to break passwords and spread to any shared drives. It also replicates itself, like a DNA strand, onto any hardware device connected to a USB port, such as digital cameras, music players or key drives. When those infected devices are then connected to another computer, they infect that machine and so the virus spreads. This is apparently the means by which the computer networks of the French Navy were infected.

What makes Conficker so devastating is that on a daily basis, each computer infected with Conficker attempts to connect to 250 Internet domains for further instructions on destructive activities to carry out. Each day these 250 domains change, confounding efforts of security experts to shut them down. In effect, Conficker has created a massive botnet that could orchestrate spam attacks or cyber extortion or cyber militia attacks.

Generally, it is a bad idea to use external devices such as key drives for data storage; such devices can be lost or stolen. Now add another reason to the list: they can be used to transmit lethal viruses from one computer to another. Some businesses have their IT staff disable USB ports to prevent employees from using key drives. This may be an idea that small business owners should consider out of an abundance of caution.