I never thought I'd be saying this, but in preparing for our move I packed up my old and trusty IBM desktop PC. In doing so, I realized how little I have used it lately, and how dependent I have become on my laptop instead. I may never unpack the old desktop and bring it up to date and begin using it again. I'm not sure, but I have to say that I have become accustomed to using a laptop as a fulltime PC. I have two Acer laptops and they have been incredibly reliable. One is W7 (upgraded from Vista) and the other is a good old XP machine. With these 2 I can service most all of my customers' needs, and see little need for my desktop. One thing I liked about the desktop was high capacity hard drive space. Generally speaking, you can grow your desktop by adding an additional drive or by making an image copy and then installing a high capacity drive. This is not an easy thing to do with a laptop, but I find my external 1TB Western Digital MyBook satisfies my demand for growing disk space.
So it remains to be seen, but for now I think there is a good possibility I may be wishing my desktop RIP.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Lenovo Support Website Infects Visitors with Trojan
Who can you trust?
From technibble.com
"PC manufacturer Lenovo had its support website attacked over the weekend when some hackers infected the site with a rogue IFrame, reports Softpedia.com. Visitors looking for drivers have since then been exposed to several exploits that will infect them with the Bredolab trojan. The Lenovo site had been confirmed as infected since at least Sunday afternoon; there are reports of visitors getting antivirus warnings from the website since Saturday.
The IFrame that was injected into the website points to an exploit kit hosted on the domain volgo-marun.cn. The kit would run a few checks to see what software was on the victim’s computer and then serve an exploit pointed at older versions of Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader, or Flash. The exploit tries to remotely execute a file that contains the Bredolab virus. Le Minh Hung, senior security researcher at Vietnamese antivirus vendor Bkis explains,
These exploit codes attempt to load file hxxp://volgo-marun.cn/pek/exe.exe which is a virus, onto victim’s computer. The virus is a new variant of Bredolab Botnet […]. After being loaded onto the computers, the virus copies itself as %Programs%\Startup\monskc32.exe and receives commands from C&C server with domain sicha-linna8.com.
The download.lenovo.com subdomain was blacklisted by Google when the attack was occurring so Firefox or Google Chrome browsers would display a warning when the site was visited. After searching for an update about this attack and visiting the Lenovo support site on my own computer, the attack seems to be cleaned up by now."
From technibble.com
"PC manufacturer Lenovo had its support website attacked over the weekend when some hackers infected the site with a rogue IFrame, reports Softpedia.com. Visitors looking for drivers have since then been exposed to several exploits that will infect them with the Bredolab trojan. The Lenovo site had been confirmed as infected since at least Sunday afternoon; there are reports of visitors getting antivirus warnings from the website since Saturday.
The IFrame that was injected into the website points to an exploit kit hosted on the domain volgo-marun.cn. The kit would run a few checks to see what software was on the victim’s computer and then serve an exploit pointed at older versions of Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader, or Flash. The exploit tries to remotely execute a file that contains the Bredolab virus. Le Minh Hung, senior security researcher at Vietnamese antivirus vendor Bkis explains,
These exploit codes attempt to load file hxxp://volgo-marun.cn/pek/exe.exe which is a virus, onto victim’s computer. The virus is a new variant of Bredolab Botnet […]. After being loaded onto the computers, the virus copies itself as %Programs%\Startup\monskc32.exe and receives commands from C&C server with domain sicha-linna8.com.
The download.lenovo.com subdomain was blacklisted by Google when the attack was occurring so Firefox or Google Chrome browsers would display a warning when the site was visited. After searching for an update about this attack and visiting the Lenovo support site on my own computer, the attack seems to be cleaned up by now."
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Google Voice Opens Up to All US Residents
Google Voice is a very nice, and free, service. I was one who got an early number. Using that number, you can forward all incoming calls to other real phone numbers, like your cell, home, office phones, etc. Very neat and a handy tool. And did I say FREE? ;-)
This article can be seen at Maximum PC's web site here
"It was just last spring that we saw Google Voice invites go out to a lucky few. The web-based service has gone on to provide over one million users with a single number to manage their communications. Now Google has opened up the service to all residents of the USA. The good people of less Googley nations will just have to hold tight.
Google Voice provides users with a new Google number that can be connected to multiple phone lines. Calling a Google Voice number will ring all phones connected with an account, but special scheduling rules can control which phones ring when. Google has been slowly rolling out new features to Voice in this last year. There is now a solid mobile web app for iPhone users, who are still prohibited from having a real app. Google has integrated voicemails into Gmail as well.
If you haven't used Google Voice, give it a shot. We are quite taken with the service around here. Even if you don't want to use the number, you can just use call forwarding to use Google's voicemail instead of your carrier's. You can also get free text messaging, and who doesn't want that? Users of Android phones will find some amazing integration with the service as well. Tell us about any Google Voice tips you have in the comments."
This article can be seen at Maximum PC's web site here
"It was just last spring that we saw Google Voice invites go out to a lucky few. The web-based service has gone on to provide over one million users with a single number to manage their communications. Now Google has opened up the service to all residents of the USA. The good people of less Googley nations will just have to hold tight.
Google Voice provides users with a new Google number that can be connected to multiple phone lines. Calling a Google Voice number will ring all phones connected with an account, but special scheduling rules can control which phones ring when. Google has been slowly rolling out new features to Voice in this last year. There is now a solid mobile web app for iPhone users, who are still prohibited from having a real app. Google has integrated voicemails into Gmail as well.
If you haven't used Google Voice, give it a shot. We are quite taken with the service around here. Even if you don't want to use the number, you can just use call forwarding to use Google's voicemail instead of your carrier's. You can also get free text messaging, and who doesn't want that? Users of Android phones will find some amazing integration with the service as well. Tell us about any Google Voice tips you have in the comments."
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Yet another new rogue program
Those of you who have been hit by one of the many, many rogue programs out there can appreciate Bharath's Security Blog.
This guy really keeps on top of what is happening out there. How he does this I don't know, but I am thankful for his work. I'd recommend bookmarking his blog and checking it once a week. You may be able to avoid being hit by one of these rogues, or if you have been infected, you may find the cure.
Defense Center is the latest rogue security application from CoreGuard Antivirus 2009 rogue family.
Defense Center rogue replaces Protection Center rogue security application and also inherits all its behavior.
Bharath M N
This guy really keeps on top of what is happening out there. How he does this I don't know, but I am thankful for his work. I'd recommend bookmarking his blog and checking it once a week. You may be able to avoid being hit by one of these rogues, or if you have been infected, you may find the cure.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Defense Center
Defense Center
Defense Center is the latest rogue security application from CoreGuard Antivirus 2009 rogue family.
Defense Center rogue replaces Protection Center rogue security application and also inherits all its behavior.
Screenshot of Defense Center application
Bharath M N
Monday, June 21, 2010
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