American Airlines Ticket Email

This one seems to still be doing the rounds.

Basically, and email pretending to be from American Airlines arrives telling you about either a refund, or a new ticket you have purchased.

If you click on the link, your PC will immediately be infected by a Trojan that is very difficult to remove.

So the best bet is to not be suckered in by curiosity!

There's a link here that we've not tested, but may help. Failing that, honestly, the best course of action after an infection is to wipe clean your hard drive, re-formatting, and do a fresh re-install of Windows.

However, you will lose ALL your data, so you must have had a good backup before doing this.

THREE RULES TO ALWAYS FOLLOW:

Backup all the data you wouldn't want to lose (documents, photos, music, videos etc)

Run a good anti-virus

NEVER click links in emails or social network sites

Good luck!

Linkedin Emails

We have received a growing number of emails pretending to be from Linkedin.

These look like Inbox messages, if you're a Linkedin user, but if you click on the link, it re-directs you to a suspicious site. It is not yet clear whether there are nasties downloaded to your computer, but the rule as ever: DO NOT CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS

Best of luck for your safety and security in 2012

Lulzsec email harvests

There's a cool little website that can check if your email address has been compromised.

It seems to be legitimate, so possibly worth checking out in light of all the recent security breaches by hackers.

Enter your password into the text box and click to see if it has been collected by hackers. If you're unliky enough to have had your email address hacked or harvested, change your password immediately.

https://shouldichangemypassword.com/

Dropbox Hack

If you're a Dropbox user, there was a bug on their servers a few weeks back, whereby for 4 hours on Sunday June 19th, anybody could log into anybody elses account with any password.

This was fixed very quickly, but worth going to dropbox.com/events and checking through your event log for that day to see if there's anything suspicious going on.

If there is, change your Dropbox password immediately for safety.

Facebook Goods Spam

There's a new email doing the rounds that appears to come from Facebook.

It's a very convincing email that asks the recipient to 'Get Started' using 'Facebook Goods'

Clicking any of the links within the email will take the recipient to an online Pharmacy page, and potentially download malware to your computer.

DON"T CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS

Dislike Facebook?

There's been plenty of media coverage about the fake Facebook 'Dislike' button.

It's a scam and is not from Facebook.

Do not use it. It will allow a rogue application access to your Facebook account and then send out spam.

"If you do give the app permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts," according to a blog post from Sophos' Graham Cluley. "But you still haven't at this point been given a "dislike" Facebook button, and the rogue application requires you to complete an online survey (which makes money for the scammers) before ultimately pointing you to a Firefox browser add-on for a Facebook dislike button developed by FaceMod."

Microsoft Security Update

Microsoft has just released an out of band update that addresses a vulnerability relating to icon files.

This vulnerability is fairly serious and thus users should update Windows as soon as possible.

Please go to Windows Update from the start menu, if your PC is not set to update automatically or click here for more information: (safe link)

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS10-046.mspx

New Alliance & Leicester Phishing Email

We just received a new phishing email today allegedly from the Alliance & Leicester. The worrying thing about this email is that it mentions Trusteer rapport which is a legitimate browser security plug-in designed to work with online banking.

The scammers are clearly across this idea and have included what appears to be a link to download the security plug-in to make your browsing safer.

If you look at the tool tip for the link the mouse over generates, you can clearly see it's not legitimate. Chances are this would download some malware that would allow access to your computer without your knowledge.

Please always exercise caution when receiving emails. The best rule is NEVER trust an email from a bank until you have thoroughly checked it out.

NEVER CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS

Firefox releases update

Firefox has been updated to 3.6.8.

This addresses certain vulnerabilities, so we urge you to update your copy asap.

http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2010/mfsa2010-48.html

You can do so within Firefox by clicking (in the Menu Bar) Help, Check For Updates.

Rogue Facebook apps could steal your data - beware

A new Facebook scam allows apps to steal your data.

DO NOT CLICK A LINK THAT SAYS: 'I'm NEVER texting AGAIN'

Read the article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jul/07/rogue-facebook-applications

Apple OSX Security Update

Apple has today released Security Update 2010-004 and Mac OS X v10.6.4.

Please go to Software Updates on your Mac to download.

Yet More Adobe Vulnerabilitues

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jun/07/adobe-warns-flash-security-flaw

Microsoft Security Bulletin For June 2010

Microsoft has released updates to address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, SharePoint, and .NET Framework as part of the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for June 2010. These vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code or operate with elevated privileges

Microsoft Security Bulletin

New Windows Update

Microsoft has released updates to address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Office, and Visual Basic for Applications as part of the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for May 2010. These vulnerabilities may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.

Apple Safari Vulnerability

A vulnerability affecting Apple Safari has just been discovered.

By tricking the user into opening a malicious web page, an attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code. Exploit code for this vulnerability is publicly available.

The only fix available as of now, until Apple offers a patch, is to disable Javascript under 'Preferences', 'Security'

The other option is to use Firefox 3.6 with the NoScript add-on, or Google Chrome. It is likely that Google Chrome is not affected by this vulnerability.