eWorld Translations

A buggy antivirus update distributed by McAfee yesterday disabled hundreds of thousands of computers running Windows XP Service Pack 3 by causing them to crash and reboot repeatedly as a result of quarantining svchost.exe, a critical Windows process.

Only those McAfee users how had the “Scan Processes on Enable” feature enabled on their systems fell victim to the glitch, though. Said feature was introduced with VirusScan 8.7.

More detailed coverage is available at Computerworld.

McAfee’s instructions for repairing affected computers are available here.

For remote assistance in repairing your computer, contact us today.

Two researchers found a way to take advantage of weaknesses in the mobile telecommunications system that allows to legally spy on people. The exploit works by figuring out the cell phone number of virtually anyone, then tracking their whereabouts and even listening to their voice mail, as reported by CNET news.

First, a target’s cell phone number is obtained from a public database that links names to numbers for caller ID purposes. This can be done by anybody operating a private branch exchange (PBX) through spoofing the outgoing caller ID and then automating phones calls to him- or herself, thereby triggering the system to perform a name lookup.

Generating a phone database of the whole US this way would only take a couple of weeks according to Nick DePetrillo, one of the researchers. His fellow researcher Don Bailey points out that this is not illegal nor is it a breach of terms of service.

Once the number has been identified, it is then matched with a geographic location using the Home Location Register (HLR) of the SS7 (Signal System) public switched network which logs the whereabouts of numbers so networks can hand calls off to one another.

This allows for tracking of cell phone users along their routes.

To make matters worse, some providers, such as T-Mobile, are also vulnerable to voice mail spoofing and as a result effectively let perpetrators listen to the victims’ messages.

In addition this enables someone to map a social web of people, their cellular numbers, the content and context of their voice mail and also relationships to others.

Given that this affects not just individual users but also corporations and government agency that have been assigned large blocks of numbers, it might be time to review your security policies to assess and mitigate the impact this might have on you and/or your business.

For assistance in reviewing your security policies as well as assessing and/or mitigating your risk profile, contact us today.

For the longest time, the very nature and extent of the information theft Google had disclosed in very general terms in January 2010 was treated as a closely guarded company secret.

As reported by the New York Times, “a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company’s Web services, including e-mail and business applications.”

Even though Google made significant changes to its networks after the intrusions, there is still the possibility left that the perpetrators will find a weakness in the code that the company is not aware of. USA Today therefore emphasizes that “the search giant could be facing complex security and liability issues for some time to come, security and tech industry analysts say.”

This once more illustrates the risks associated with entrusting vast amounts of digital information to storage in a cluster of computers “somewhere out there”, commonly referred to as “cloud computing”; a single breach can result in disastrous leaks or losses.

For help in deciding which platform to choose for conducting your business, as well as for help in assessing the implications of your current setup, contact us today.

Wired reports that  FBI agents who were targeting alleged criminal spammers last year obtained a warrant for a suspect’s Google Docs account. This might be the first publicly acknowledged search warrant that benefited from a suspect’s reliance on cloud computing.

As the article indicates, “Privacy advocates have long warned that law enforcement agencies can access sensitive files stored on services like Google Docs with greater ease than files stored on a target’s hard drive. In particular, the 1986 Stored Communications Act allows the government to access a customer’s data whenever there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe the information would be relevant in a criminal investigation — a much lower legal standard than the ‘probable cause’ required for a search warrant.”

While in this case the FBI and prosecutors opted for a full-blown search warrant, this incident may serve as a reminder of the intricacies and ramifications involved in choosing a proper platform to conduct your business on.

For help in deciding which platform to choose for conducting your legitimate and legally sound business, as well as for help in assessing the implications of your current setup, contact us today.

CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports that almost every one of the 6,000 used copy machines sitting ready at a warehouse in New Jersey to be sold is holding a secret.

This is because almost every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive, just like the one in your PC, to temporarily store images of the documents that are copied, scanned or emailed by the machine.

This includes a treasure trove of information, among them social security numbers, bank records, income tax forms, birth certificates, pay stubs, you name it. If you happen to stumble across a machine used by a police department, you might end up with detailed domestic violence complaints, lists of wanted sex offenders, or lists of targets in a major drug raid.

Hitting “print” on a machine from a New York insurance company produced 300 pages of individual medical records, including blood test results, drug prescriptions and a cancer diagnosis. This might even be construed as a breach of federal privacy law.

Even though manufacturers are offering encryption or security packages for their products that might help to remedy this situation to a certain extent, businesses seem to be reluctant to shell out e.g. $500 to Sharp for a product that automatically erases an image from the hard drive.

But with more and more digital copiers piling up in warehouses, this might be a small price to pay in comparison to the egg in the face that could result from accidental or intentional exposure of such oversights or lapses in judgment.

Let us help you to protect the reputation of your business as well as the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the data you hold in your possession and/or have been entrusted with. Contact us today.

As reported by Computerworld, the Zeus botnet is currently using an unpatched flaw in the Adobe PDF document format to infect users’ PCs with malicious code.

These attacks were predicted by experts once the “/launch” design flaw in PDF documents became known.

Upon opening the rogue PDF file, users are asked to save a PDF file, e.g. “Royal_Mail_Delivery_Notice.pdf”, yet, said file actually is a Windows executable that hijacks the PC when it runs.

Sadly enough, this is – strictly speaking – not even an actual security vulnerability, but rather a by-design function of Adobe’s specifications which can even exploit fully-patched versions of Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat.

To make matters worse, this issues was already raised in August 2009 and presented at the Black Hat USA conference.

Detailed instructions on how to remedy this situation area available in this Adobe Reader Blog entry.

For assistance in implementing Adobe’s workaround and/or for help with reviewing your computer system security and protective measures, contact us today.

Microsoft is kindly reminding its customers that there will no longer be security updates for certain products and service packs so that it is extremely urgent for customers to move to a supported platform by the dates stated below:

• Windows XP Service Pack 2 will no longer be supported after July 13, 2010. Many customers are still on this version, so we encourage upgrading to Service Pack 3 or to Windows 7 as soon as possible.
• Extended support for Windows 2000 will also be retired as of July 13, 2010. After that time, we will no longer provide security or any other updates for Windows 2000.
• Windows Vista RTM (“Release To Manufacturing”, meaning the original release of Windows Vista, without any Service Pack installed) will no longer be supported after the April 13, 2010 bulletin release. Service Pack 1 will still be supported until July 12, 2011 but we recommend customers update to Service Pack 2 or Windows 7 at this time.

For help with the installation of these Service Packs and/or with the migration to a more current operating system or to have one of our PC specialists review the current status of your computer, contact us today.

Today, on “Patch Tuesday”, Microsoft is releasing 11 security bulletins, 5 of which are rated critical and are all affecting Windows. Another 5 are rated important and address issues found in Windows, MS Office and MS Exchange. The 11th bulletin, rated moderate, affects Windows.

Given that exploit code for two of the vulnerabilities has already been found in the wild, please consider installing the updates and patches sooner rather than later.

For help with the patch install or to have one of our PC specialists review the current status of your computer, contact us today.

Inmates in Miami-Dade jails and elsewhere, as well as other criminal elements, have figured out how to rack up tens of thousants of dollars in collect calls that are billed to the fax lines of unwitting victims.

While in earlier days the mode du jour was to talk recipients under some pretense into entering *72 and another phone number on their phone, nowadays things have been automated, to a large extent by exploiting convenience features embedded in fax machines, answering machines and smart(er) home and office phones.

These devices by default are equipped with a PIN (personal identification number) that protects certain features such as call forwarding. Unless the user has changed said PIN from its default setting, only a rather limited amount of attempts is necessary to cover the default PINs of the most prevalent manufacturers.

An article in The Miami Herald illustrates quite nicely what may await you if you don’t take this precautionary step.

For help changing your PINs and/or to have one of our specialists review the current status of your devices, contact us today.

An emergency security update for Internet Explorer issued on Tuesday plugs 10 holes, including one critical vulnerability actively exploited in attacks in the wild.

Even though, according to Microsoft, users of IE8 and Windows 7 are not vulnerable to the latter flaw, the operating systems affected by the cumulative patch include

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008
• Vista
• Windows 7

In general, security experts were pleased that Microsoft chose to issue an emergency out-of-band patch for the critical IE hole being attacked rather than wait two more weeks for the next Patch Tuesday release.

For help with the patch install or to have one of our PC specialists review the current status of your computer, contact us today.