The Computer Clarity Blog

How Our Technicians Secure Your Computer with our Clarity Shield Services
In this video, I will demonstrate how our technicians protect your computers security
with our Clarity Shield Services.

Computer Clarity

Facebook is a favorite hunting ground for hackers. The vast pool of users offered by this popular social network and the ease with which accounts can be hacked make it a highly attractive channel for spreading malware. Such is the case with the latest variant of a well-known worm: Koobface.GK. The bait consists of a Christmas greetings video hosted on a YouTube page. On playing the video, or clicking a link on the page, users will download and install the worm. Image available here

When the virus is installed on a computer, the following image appears and if users fail to enter the corresponding ‘captcha’ (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), it threatens to reboot the computer within three minutes. When the three minutes are up, nothing happens, but the computer is rendered unusable. Every time the captcha text is entered, the worm registers a new domain where the video will be hosted in order to continue being distributed.

According to Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs, “social networks have become one of the methods most frequently used by hackers to spread their creations, due to the false sense of security many users have regarding the content published on these networks. Users generally trust the messages and content they receive, and consequently hackers get a high level of response through these channels”.

Christmas: hackers’ favorite time of year

Internet users often send Christmas greetings to their family and friends over the Web. Infection figures are always high at this time of the year, as new viruses emerge that take advantage of this increased user activity.

Every Christmas we see new malware designed specifically for the festive season:

- MerryX.A appeared in 2005. It reached users’ computers in a Christmas greetings email with an attachment. It was really a Trojan designed to capture keystrokes and steal information. It managed to infect over 50,000 Internet users in only a week. More information

- Zafi.D. Although this worm appeared in 2002, it is still distributed through emails that use Christmas greetings as bait. It opens a port on the infected computer without users’ knowledge and downloads another Trojan.

- The Navidad (Christmas in Spanish) malware family has numerous variants. These astute worms appeared in 2007. They are difficult to detect because they reach computers as a reply to an email which has previously been sent to another (infected) recipient. The message includes the Navidad.exe file which infects computers when run.

Here are a few security tips from PandaLabs when using social networks:

1) Don’t click suspicious links from non-trusted sources. This should apply to messages received through Facebook, and through other social networks and even via email.

2) If you click on the links, check the target page. If you don’t recognize it, close your browser.

3) Even if you don’t see anything strange in the target page, but you are asked to download something, don’t accept.

4) If you do download or install an executable file and the PC starts to launch messages, there is probably malware on your computer.

5) As a general rule, make sure your computer is well protected, to ensure that you are not exposed to the risk of infection from any malicious code.

Computer Clarity

Three Rules To Prevent Computer Virus Infections

First Rule: Read Your Computer Screens.

Read the window that pops up on your computer screen before you hit “Okay”, “Cancel”, “Run”, “Yes”, “No”, or even “Maybe”! People are like monkeys. Any monkey can be trained to hit a button to get what it wants. We have been trained with a Pavlovian response to hit a button, get something out of our face, then we get what we want. Every virus writer knows this! Most viruses don’t get you because of sophisticated programming code. They get you with social engineering. They get you because they know that most humans don’t think. Like monkeys, most humans will hit the button until we get what we want, regardless of what that button really does. So, many of the viruses I am hired at expensive rates to remove, are installed by the user because they were tricked into hitting a button without reading the screen. But the really insidious part of this scenario is that one screen is often a EULA (End User License agreement) This is a legally binding contract that, by hitting the “Okay” button, affirms your agreement to the terms and conditions of proceeding with the installation. In other words, even if you know the person who did this to you and you had them in court in front of a judge, you could not hold them liable for the damage to your computer system because you legally agreed to the installation that caused the damage. They screwed ya, and you legally asked for it. You must read your screens!

Second Rule: Google Everything.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you must use Google, any search engine will do. But, anything that you don’t understand…Google It! This can apply to anything of life’s issues in today’s world, but in this context, if you read your screens and you come across a company you don’t know, a program you don’t recognize, or a message that just don’t make any sense to you…GOOGLE IT!. If the company, its software, or its messages are legitimate, your Google search will reveal information supporting its legitimacy. If it is a fake trying to trick you into a disaster, you will see thousands of websites all saying how bad it is and all of the problems it causes. You don’t need to read any further; in a heartbeat, you know to close every window before this thing really gets you into trouble.  Read this article:  One of The Most Common Infection Tactics Today for instructions on closing dangerous windows.

Third Rule: Maintain, Trust, and use YOUR Antivirus Properly.

This involves a few things. First, just like the lock on your front door, if it isn’t installed properly, maintained properly, and used properly, it won’t keep bad guys out. Installed properly is fairly obvious. If there is an error during installation, it ain’t werkin. Remove the antivirus, reinstall it, or pick a different one. Second, maintaining the security system properly. If the subscription runs out or the software stops updating, it is not properly maintained. Just like the lock on your front door, if the screws are hanging out, it ain’t protecting you. Fix it or you will have an intrusion. Second, you have a security system. This is like your computers security guarding company. If your house is guarded by Brink’s Home Security, you wouldn’t trust a guy from ACME Security Systems to come and fix a security problem, but this is exactly what happens. Some fake antivirus warning pops in front of your face warning you of all of these infections, but if it is not YOUR antivirus, RUN!!! Third, Use Your Security System Properly. If you have a lock on your front door that you never lock and you invite anyone who knocks to “come on in”, no lock can protect you. Using your antivirus properly means that you do not invite everyone in and that you scan everything that you download before you run it. If you don’t use your antivirus properly, you will get infected and your computer will die. Just like the lock on your front door, its only a matter of time until a bad guy tries to open it.

These are the three rules to avoid getting a virus on your computer. These are the three rules that, if everybody followed, I would loose 80% of my computer repair business overnight. But these are the three rules that so few people follow, so, my job is secure. Keep breaking these rules and, as a computer repair technician, I’ll always have work. But, if you can follow these rules, I can finally stop that insanity and do something I really like. So, be smart, be careful, and be virus free.

Computer Clarity

Over the last ten years, I have removed close to a half million viruses from thousands of computers.  One of the most common questions that I am asked is: “Why do these people write viruses?”  The answer is that there are several types of people writing different types of malware for several different purposes.  Here are some examples:

Vandals-
These people are like the punks that vandalize property for fun.  They are in small cliques and they try to impress each other by infecting the most computers in the shortest amount of time.  One virus from around seven years ago infected over 250,000 computers in 24 hours.  This one made all of the desktop icons run away from the mouse arrow.  This group of cyber-vandal virus writers wrote most of the early viruses, but as a percentage of all viruses discovered to date, they are less significant than some of the other groups.

People with a grudge-
Another small group of people who wrote many early viruses are the people with grudges against Microsoft, the government, corporations, or specific professions.  One virus from around six years ago called Magistrate targets attorneys.  This virus would infect a computer, search for any document containing legal terms and mail it out to everyone in the address book.  Other viruses would infect as many computers as possible, then tell all of them at the same time to try to access a web site or other internet server causing such high traffic that the server shuts down.

Cyber Warfare against the United States-
Over the last five years, another form of covert warfare has emerged.  Many antivirus companies have reported a high number of viruses originating in China, North Korea, and Iran.  They also report that these viruses seemed to be designed to infect English speaking countries specifically.  This is The Art of War in its perfect modern adaptation: never attack your enemy army directly when you can weaken your enemy infrastructure indirectly.   By infecting home, business, and government computers, the enemies of the United States can decrease our overall productivity, increase our population’s general level of stress and irritation, and possibly steal some secrets along the way.

Info Thieves-
These are the writers of the spyware floating around the internet.  They are looking for passwords, account numbers, social security numbers, and anything else that would give them access to your credit, money, or your identity.  This group and the next are both the fastest growing and the most damaging types of threats.

Viruses for Profit-
This group started out writing the adware that makes all of the popup ads fill a computer screen every time the computer connects to the internet.  They make arrangements with advertisers to get paid a few pennies every time their popup ad hits a desktop.  With a few hundred ads popping up on a few hundred thousand computers every day, these viruses generate income.  But a much more serious threat in this group has emerged.  Rogueware is software that impersonates an antivirus and attempts to entice the computer user to install the virus with warnings of viruses.  This is the biggest and fastest growing type of computer malware that I have seen so far.

<a href=”http://www.computerclarity.com/clarity-blog/?p=6″>See my article
concerning rogueware for more information.</a></p>

As you can see, the question “Why do people write viruses” has a logical answer.  Even if there are several types of virus writers with several motivations, people write malicious software because they are malicious people.

Computer Clarity