January 2009

Downadup Worm Awareness

The nasty worm dubbed Downadup.AL is reaching out and touching many people. F-Secure has a (beta) application to check your Windows system for infection - it's here: ftp://ftp.f-secure.com/anti-virus/tools/beta/f-downadup.zip. If you use Firefox browser (and why wouldn't you?) using the Add-on No-Script is a wise move to prevent this and other nasties from gaining a foothold into your system. Of course, running a software firewall, hardware router and and Anti-virus application is your best bet to remaining free of doom.

Phishing Targets Tweeter

The popular mobile service Tweeter has been hit with phishing messages. Nothing new about this. It is a good time to remind folks about the devious nature of these evil doers. Any method will be used to induce the unwary or stupid to visit sites that will attempt to upload all kinds of malware, spyware, trojans, etc. to your PC, smartphone or other device. The vector for this specific attack is the very popular 'TinyURL' online application that turns large, unwieldy URLs such as “http://www.somewhere.orf/really/long/directory/” into something such as “http://tinyurl.com/4d4a2” which can be remembered long enough to key into a browser. The problem is that the TinyURL could lead one to evil sites. Very bad. TinyURL's solution, which folks either don't know about or don't use or understand is to use the Preview TinyURL. In our previous example one should append the TinyURL with preview: “http://preview.tinyurl.com/4d4a2”. This will allow for the best practice of safely viewing a rendering of the intended target before actually visiting it.