Month: April 2016

Social media continues to be a primary method of keeping in touch with friends and family — whether they live near or far. The average American does not just sit down on their couch after a long day at work and browse through their favorite site for a few minutes, though. Today. people access these sites from their mobile devices while they are on the go as well. This constant exposure to these sites means that it is more likely that you will fall victim to an innocuous-looking scam.

Sunglasses Scam

Who hasn’t seen a post by a friend on their social media page prompting them to purchase a pair of their favorite sunglasses at a steep discount? This is the result of your friend’s account being hacked, though it might not be apparent that this is the case at first. Instead, you might think that they are actually doing you a favor. After all, with the many outlet shops and overstock opportunities today, it makes perfect sense that your favorite type of sunglasses would be heavily discounted and that your friend would think of you.

How the Crooks Scam You

Once you click on the link included in the ad your friend posted, you’ll typically see an array of sunglasses from your favorite brand. Curiously, all them will be marked down by the same percentage points. Perhaps, though that does not seem strange to you, so you decide to purchase a few pairs at the great, heavily discounted price. Instead of going to a secure site that is protected by an industry-standard SSL certification, so that your credit card information is encrypted, you’ll be taken to a non-secure website that offers no protection whatsoever. Instead, your credit card information is transmitted to the scam artist in plain text and can be exploited in the future.

How to Protect Yourself

First, if it looks like it is too good to be true, then it nearly always is. Don’t fall for heavily discounted items and inquire on the manufacturer’s website or social media page about the validity of the ads claims before you complete on online transaction. If you are the person whose account is generating these ads, first change your password, then remove all apps that look suspicious. Finally, run a thorough virus scan from a trusted manufacturer on your computer.

As the owner of an IT company, we take the risk of your cybersecurity threats very seriously. In April 2016, Samba and Windows users discovered the potential dangers of the Badlock bug. This bug is in its infancy but could get worse. By understanding what Badlock is now, how it affects users, what signs to look out for, and how to get rid of it, you can prevent Badlock from ever worming its way into our clients’ computers.

What Is Badlock?

This new bug was discovered in March 2016 with its own .org site. It began affecting Samba and Windows users by April. Any Samba users running 3.6.x, 4.0.x, 4.1.x, 4.2.0 through 4.2.9, 4.3.0 through 4.3.6, and 4.4.0 could be targeted. Any Windows users running Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 can be affected as well.

What Does Badlock Do?

Badlock affects both the Local Security Authority Domain Policy or LSAD and Security Account Manager or SAM protocols. This bug can then attack users’ computers in one of two ways:

• Denial-of-service attacks: Also known as DoS attacks, denial-of-service attacks can kill service, preventing users from getting online and doing other basic computer functions.
• Man-in-the-middle attacks: Also known as MITM attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks can affect up to two users at once, as the name suggests. A hacker or attacker can glean information and gain private access by changing the conversation stream and other data between two users.

How Do You Know If You Have Badlock?

It can be difficult to know if your clients have Badlock. To be on the safe side, you should consider sending out an email or making a video informing all your clients of what Badlock is and what it could do. If any of your clients report that their computer has been acting strangely, it’s best to address this as soon as possible.

How Can You Prevent Badlock?

At this point, the respective Samba and Windows teams are working tirelessly to prevent the spread of Badlock to any other users. Samba users can download an office patch that was released for SAMBA+ and Enterprise SAMBA. Windows users can report any instances of Badlock. However, Microsoft is optimistic that the company is doing a good job containing the bug.

Badlock: The Verdict

While Badlock sounds risky and scary in name alone, the consensus is that it’s not as detrimental as other bugs and vulnerabilities. Microsoft has an Exploitability Index where bugs are rated on a scale of one to 10. The tech giant rated Badlock a three out of 10. One reason Badlock isn’t causing a huge panic is because of its MITM method of attack, which requires any hacker to know a bit about the network they’re invading. That takes more time, patience, and dedication than random attacks.

Overall, you shouldn’t overlook Badlock entirely (especially if your clients use Samba or Windows), but with some education, your clients can prevent the spread of Badlock relatively easily. With enough awareness, it seems like the potentially dangerous Badlock bug can be contained and prevented from more widespread attacks.

A computer virus is at best a mild inconvenience that requires time and money to solve, and at worst something that compromises your personal security and crashes your whole system. At either end of the spectrum it is clearly something that should be avoided at all costs.

The very first computer virus was the Creeper program, which was designed not to harm computers but to display a message. The second was the Reaper program which was designed specifically to delete the Creeper. The first virus to get into the wild and spread, was the Elk Cloner. It to was mostly harmless and meant as a prank at first. Most virus’ are not as harmless as these, and despite efforts on many levels to prevent them new viruses emerge often. There are a few that have stood out in the past few years as particularly bad and/or far reaching.

Viruses You Should Know About

• Sobig.F: This version of the Sobig virus has been dubbed the “fastest growing virus in history.” The thing about this virus is it will come from people who are seemingly trustworthy. It may be a co-worker or friend who sends the email for all you know. The attachment will be labeled things such as “thank you”, or “wicked screen saver”, things that they may actually send you. When the attachment is opened it sends the virus to all the people on your email list spreading itself across the internet through email attachments.
• Blaster: This virus is also in the form of a worm that is spread through Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000. It could be spread without the user actually opening an attachment. The 18-year-old creator was sentenced to 18 months in prison, despite the virus not being known for being particularly harmful because it was far reaching and the implications of a worm spread without the user opening an attachment is disturbing, even if it was isolated to one operating system.
• My Doom Virus: This virus has been dubbed the worst ever. It is a worm like Sobig, but shortly after it emerged it accounted for 20 percent to 30 percent of the email traffic in a single day. Slowing systems and spreading faster than anyone could have expected.

What Can You Do to Protect Yourself and Your Company?

• Do not open e-mails that look suspicious or from an unknown sender.
• Do not ever open an e-mail attachment unless it is from a sender you know and you are expecting it.
• Keep your anti-virus software up to date.
• Also keep in mind that if your computer is running very slowly, something is wrong. Chances are it is a virus of some sort and you should get it checked out by professionals for both increased security and speed.

At Data Magic Computer Services we offer IT services at the level you need. From full data management, to co-management, to consulting and development. Contact us today to increase your company’s security and prevent any of these viruses from effecting your business. If your personal or work computer is infiltrated by any virus we can help remove it and repair whatever weakness allowed it in to begin with.