Online Home of Derek Meister
Evan Erwin has a “funny because it’s true” blog entry on his site entitled Top 10 System Administrator Truths.
There’s nothing there that anyone who’s ever been responsible for supporting computer end-user doesn’t already know, but sometimes it’s good for the soul to repeat these things and commiserate with others.
According to IT Observer, the widespread Sober email virus that infected millions of computers in 2005 has a variant scheduled to make another large-scale attack on January 5th 2006. This date also happens to be the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party, making this malicious software as much a political statement as an internet threat.
In other news, C|Net News.com is reporting on an instant messenger threat that’s labeled IM.Myspace04.AIM by the IM security vendor, IMLogic, that discovered the new threat.
This particular piece of malicious software is actually programmed to strike up random conversations with AOL Instant Messenger users using a pre-programmed script. The worm attempts to convince the potential victim into clicking on a web link to a supposed picture file, which is really a copy of itself in disguise.
As usual, computer owners are reminded to make sure that they are running both antivirus and antispyware programs on their computers and that they take the time to ensure that those protections, as well as Windows itself, have all the latest security updates from their developers.
NASDAQ.com has a press release online from eBay’s President and Chief Executive Meg Whitman, in which Whitman claims that 40,000 XBox 360 videogame consoles have been sold through the popular online auction site.
According to Microsoft, a total of 400,000 units have been brought into the US for sale, which means that one out of every ten systems purchased on launch day were later put up for sale by people looking to double, if not triple, their purchase price.
Yahoo is currently running a Reuters article claiming that cybercrime generated more illegal revenue than drug trafficking in 2004 and shows no sign of slowing down.
The article quotes Valerie McNiven, a US Treasury adviser, as saying, “Last year was the first year that proceeds from cybercrime were greater than proceeds from the sale of illegal drugs, and that was, I believe, over $105 billion.”
As anyone who’s spent any time in the online world can tell, there are plenty of avenues for shady people to make money at the expense of others. The obvious sources include spam emails for less than reputable products, but there’s also profit to be made in compromising the computers of unsuspecting owners in order to track online movement to sell to underhanded marketers, display unwanted advertisements, or even use those machines as spam relay points to send out millions of emails on behalf of the spammers.
Phishing, the term given to attempts to trick people into giving criminals sensitive information such as passwords or credit card info, is also generating billions of dollars of illegal revenue. If you ask around, just about everyone you know with an email account has probably gotten a fraudulent email claiming to be from eBay, Paypal or numerous banks asking for passwords and the like.
As always, we live in a “buyer beware” world. Always be wary of clicking on links in emails claiming to be from companies and avoid opening any attachments added to emails claiming to be from your internet service provider. If you think the company in question is legitimate, you can always close that email and log in directly through their website in your web browser, to prevent being sent to a false website.
And as always, make sure you have anti-virus and anti-spyware protection. My personal recommendation is a combination of Trend Micro’s PC-Cilin and Webroot’s Spysweeper, both of which are available in most retail stores near you.
The Mozilla Foundation has announced the release of version 1.5 of the popular web browser Firefox.
Some of the improvements seen in this release of the alternative to Internet Explorer are an improved rendering engine, better automated updates, browser tabs that allow drag and drop reordering, improved popup blocking and increased support for platforms such as Apple’s OSX operating system.