PCTips Box

You invested in dead bolts and alarm systems to protect your business from theft of merchandise and equipment. But a cyber thief does not need access through the front door to steal the information you store on your PCs. Client credit card and bank account numbers, employee data and other confidential files are all at risk in a cyber attack.

Implementing sound security measures can greatly reduce your vulnerability to phishing (a type of Internet-based scam designed to steal your identity), spyware, and other malicious software used to steal or otherwise compromise business data. The good news is that built-in security features in Windows Vista Ultimate make it much easier to safeguard your PCs. Here are three you should know about: (more…)

At the beginning of May, security company PC Tools revealed that Windows Vista “is not so immune.” And in this attempt to wrap the obvious together with statistics from a limited pool of users and serve the result as a revelation, the security outfit went on to claim that “Windows Vista is more susceptible to malware than the eight year old Windows 2000 operating system, and only 37% more secure than Windows XP”. Apparently, PC Tolls had detected 639 unique threats per 1,000 Vista machines, in comparison to just 586 for Windows 2000, 478 for Windows Server 2003, and 1,021 for XP. The conclusion is, of course, nothing short of obvious and was stated as clear as possible, with a challenge to Vista’s malware immunity.

Now, the fact is that citing data from over 450 million computers, in respect to PC Tools’ just 1.4 million machines, Microsoft disputed the findings, and continued to claim that Windows Vista is the safest Windows operating system on the market. Microsoft has repeated this refrain since Vista was launched, and provided ample proof, from the data collected through the Malicious Software Removal Tool to vulnerability counting games involving the main platforms. (more…)

Windows Live Messenger accounts for the largest community for any IM client worldwide. At the end of 2007, in November, as Microsoft was unveiling Windows Live 2.0, the next generation of its suite of software and services in the cloud, the company estimated that Windows Live Messenger had an install base of approximately 300 million users. In this context, it failed to come as a surprise the fact that Windows Live messenger was the most attacked instant messaging platform in 2007, according to statistics provided by FaceTime Communications. And with such a high profile, it is bound that the trend will continue into 2008. (more…)

The iPhone, that extremely popular gadget built by the Cupertino company Apple, is one of the latest devices threatened by some malicious packages, as Orla Cox of Symantec today warned. What’s interesting is that this threat, if we can name it so, is not as dangerous as it may sound, because the only thing it does is to harm some of the applications deployed on the affected iPhone. The malicious file comes as a firmware update and is named “iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep”. Its creators described the package “an important system update; install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware”, according to the Symantec official. (more…)

Security has always been one of the top concerns for us no matter if we’re talking about viruses, malware, Trojan horses, credit card fraud or hack attacks. They’re all dangerous and capable of causing important damages or financial losses, so it’s extremely important to apply the most powerful security measures as soon as possible. Christmas is not only that time of the year when you finally get the chance to spend some time with family and friends, but it’s also one of the busiest periods when it comes to computer security. Although we’re all expecting Santa and his nice gifts, don’t be too surprised if you get only Viagra, watches and drugs as spam messages have always been so generous. (more…)

We all know how annoying UAC can get, especially when you’ve just installed Windows Vista and you have a dozen of programs and security apps ready to install. A small program called TweakUAC gets rid of this annoyance by putting UAC into “quiet mode.” What it actually does is without turning off UAC,

it doesn’t display any prompts for administrators when attempting to do an administrative task. However, (more…)

Malware refers to any software that secretly infiltrates and damages a computer system without the informed consent of the owner. Despite the use of anti-virus and anti-spyware software, malware can still affect even careful users. One of the stated goals of the Microsoft Windows Vista release is to greatly improve the overall security of the Windows operating system and curb the impact of malware. To this end, Microsoft redesigned both the least user and administrative accounts on Vista; the result is perhaps the most secure version of Windows in the age of the Internet.

The concept of least user or standard user accounts has been a part of Windows releases for many years. (more…)

If you have been on the Internet for any length of time, you’ve probably ran across the topic of spyware, adware, or malware. This is software that has installed on your computer, many times without your permission, or accidentally by clicking on a popup ad, etc. The problem with these programs is they will slow your computer down, make changes to your desktop, homepage, search page, load programs into your taskbar tray and otherwise get in the way. In the worst cases, they will even transmit information from your computer to servers on the Internet.
So the question becomes, if your computer is infected with these problematic programs, how do you get rid of them. In most cases, you can run a free removal program to remove these infections, in more serious cases, you may have to download a specialized removal program to free yourself of these problems. (more…)

Apparently, the latest version of Windows Defender thinks that Alexa is a trojan, talk about false positives, unless, that is, Alexa has REALLY changed what they do. My guess is that it is detecting it as another piece of malware, as it shows in the screen shots, Win32/VB.BZ. I’m sure an apology is sure to come from Microsoft, and that they do not have something against Alexa.

This morning I discovered several PCs running Windows Defender and the Alexa Toolbar were receiving messages that the Alexa Toolbar was classified as a trojan. The name classification within Windows Defender was Win32/VB.BZ. (more…)

IT LOOKS LIKE Microsoft’s unhackable OS activation malware has been hacked. There is an active thread at the Keznews forums, and a summary on its main page about the crack. It is a simple brute force attack, dumb as a rock that just tries keys. If it gets one, you manually have to check it and try activation.

It is ugly, takes hours, is far from point and click, but it is said to work. I don’t have any Vista installs because of the anti-user licensing so I have not tested it personally. The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? (more…)