security

Doc, what security settings are you using on your network?

Dave Farquhar security ,

A reader who will remain anonymous (he can out himself if he wishes) sent me an interesting observation. He was in his doctor’s office last week, and out of curiosity, he ran a wifi scanner on his phone just to see what networks were available and how they were secured.

What he saw wasn’t pretty. Especially considering he was in a building full of doctors, lawyers, and financial advisors. Read more

Cleaning USB drives with Linux

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

A longtime reader sent me a really good question today. If I had a USB flash drive and I didn’t know where it’s been or what it’s done, how would I clean it to make it safe to use? He said using Linux was fair game, so that made the answer a lot easier.

Note that as of 2015, a knowledgeable attacker can make a USB drive that will survive this cleaning method, so I only recommend this 90% of the time, and the problem is, it’s impossible to know which 90%.

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A reasonable explanation for why religious sites are more likely to be infected with malware

Dave Farquhar security ,

Last week, Symantec issued a surprising report stating that religious web sites are more likely to harbor malware than sites that offer dirty pictures and videos.

I’m pretty sure there’s a reasonable explanation. Read more

New Microsoft Security Essentials

Dave Farquhar security, Windows

Microsoft tried to quietly release a new version of Security Essentials yesterday, then everyone started talking about it. The new version 4.0 claims to be faster and catch more viruses. Of course, that’s everything we want in virus scanning–besides being free.

The most recent data I read stated the old MSE was about 93% effective, so there was some room for improvement there. Read more

One in five Macs has malware–but read the fine print

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security, Viruses , , ,

Sophos claimed today that 20% of the people who’ve installed their free Mac antivirus has malware.  That’s not altogether surprising, but it’s also not nearly as big of a problem as it sounds.

One in 36 systems has Mac malware, which means the Mac has an infection that could actually be harming the system itself. That number is low but believable. In my experience, the people who seek out antivirus software are usually the ones who need it the least.
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Oh nos! The Internet is going to die in July!

Dave Farquhar security

I’ve seen some scary-looking headlines, predicting doomsday for “hundreds of thousands” of Internet users on July 9 when the FBI shuts them down.

Actually, the FBI isn’t sabotaging the Internet. Here’s what’s going on and how to make sure you don’t get caught in the crossfire. Read more

What’s going on with Macintosh security?

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, security, Viruses , , , , , , , , ,

The latest figures I’ve read say there are perhaps a half-million infected Macintoshes still floating around out there, an improvement from the high of 600,000 that I was seeing a few weeks ago, but probably not what Apple had hoped after releasing its most recent fix.

I argued three weeks ago that the end of the innocence was either here or very near. I’ll argue now that it’s gone: There are now 250 known Macintosh OS X viruses in existence. In 2003 there were none. Read more

Security+ test taking tips

Dave Farquhar security , ,

One of my coworkers is being required to get a Security+ certification, and asked me for advice. She’s gone to class, read some books, and she’s going to another class on TCP/IP, but she’s just not comfortable yet. I gave her some Security+ test taking tips.

Since other people might be in her situation, I figure it’s worth writing about. Read more

Take back some privacy

Dave Farquhar security , ,

The creepy Girls Near Me smartphone app is drawing some much-needed attention at data brokers, companies that aggregate information about you from public information and information you provide to marketers. I even found an article that talks about how to opt out from selected brokers.

I recommend you do. Open up a temporary Yahoo or Hotmail account, use it for your opt-outs, then close or abandon the account. Read more

Firefox disables out-of-date Java plugins

Dave Farquhar security , ,

Firefox is advising users to disable vulnerable Java versions on Windows. I actually saw this in action on a machine yesterday–a machine that has to run a slightly dated version of the JRE because a vendor hasn’t certified their product with the current version yet. Read more