McAfee Users
Really a terrible design but apparently if a McAfee
update request does not find the McAfee site and confirm the antivirus
status, it defaults to report that all is OK. We have confirmed this
problem on at least two machines. When we clicked "update" we received a
message that "all services are up to date." When in fact, they
were not!
Further diagnostics revealed that typing in
www.mcafee.com in the Internet Explorer address bar redirected us to
another site, i.e., the McAfee web site was completely unavailable to
that machine. So do not simply right
click the McAfee icon and select Update. Open the McAfee
application and check the status on a regular basis. Although we
have not seen this behavior with Norton's LiveUpdate, Norton users
should also check the actual status on a regular basis.
"Alternative" Web Browser
May not offer the security and protection you think.
Mozilla/Firefox and other alternative browsers have their own security
issues to resolve but Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is still the
hacker's favorite target.
The article We have played with a couple of
the alternatives but continue to use IE. Perhaps the "other"
browsers just did not add enough to the Internet experience to make it
worth our while. Since we are behind a hardware firewall, run
software firewalls, do not load "junk" and keep our security patches up
to date, we have never had a problem. Price Zip
File
This newsletter is a bit late for this warning as it
came through to our email
mid-September. Our virus filter did not catch
it but fortunately we are always leery of attachments and immediately
deleted the message.
Spammed to millions of email addresses, this new Trojan
attempts to turn off the Internet Security and/or antivirus application.
If you opened a "zipped" file with a name like Price,
New Price, etc., you may have turned off your Internet Security.
Open your security application, check the status very carefully.
It may be a good idea to force an update. SSL
Certificate
If you visit a site that prompts you to install a Certificate, think twice!
"Legitimate financial institutions will not produce an
alert before you enter the Web site," Susan Larson, vice president of
global threat analysis and research for Scotts Valley, Calif.-based SurfControl, warns. "If you get
an alert from Windows, don't continue. Go back and navigate to the site
as you would normally do. Those sites should have a digital certificate
from trusted authorities and the browser knows what those trusted
authorities are."
These certificates are found in the browser's
Tools menu > Options > Content tab but reviewing or approving them is
simply overwhelming!
Trust only those certificates that came with the browser
or are added/updated by the browser manufacturer or a well known and
trusted provider.
When is Google not Google?
When you have a virus!
One of our recent McAfee problem computers mentioned
above would, when we attempt to open the McAfee site, redirect us to a
Google looking site. It had the Google header but something
about the page just didn't feel right. It was
somewhat perplexing but after a little checking we discovered a virus!
Just before releasing this newsletter we received an
initial article talking about this very problem. Apparently not
only is the Google site spoofed but so is Microsoft, Yahoo and perhaps
others.
The problem was caused by an Internet download (imagine
that) called PremiumSearch. If that name rings any bells with you,
your search sites may not be the search sites you really want to use.
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