Christmas can be a humbug already this year!

Websense® Security Labs™ ThreatSeeker™ Network

has discovered that malware authors are already using Christmas themes this year as a social engineering tactic, in an effort to gain control over compromised machines. This campaign uses email messages in the form of e-greetings, leading to supposed animated postcards. These actually lead to a Trojan backdoor that has been distributed in previous malicious spam campaigns.

An example of the post card:

 

Make sure you know for sure that someone sent you a card.  If you really want to be sure then call and ask where they sent it from.

With that info,

Safer Surfing!

Now it's easier to decide

It's about time!  Trying to decide which security program you want to use and which one is best has been difficult - until now.  There have not been any agreed upon standards as to how and what to test for.

Members of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) have published guidelines that, for the first time, set recognized standards for testing security software. The standards have been developed and agreed to by more than 40 security experts, product testers and members of the media from around the world. The creation and publication of these standards is a critical first step in fulfilling AMTSO’s mission to improve the testing of anti-malware products.

Read more here.

With that info,

Safer Surfing!

Another opt-out Toolbar - Java + MLS

Be careful when updating or installing Sun Java now.  IE users now have to opt-out (that's right - out) of automatically installing MSN Live Search toolbar just as Firefox users must opt-out of the Yahoo toolbar.  For both browsers the install toolbar option is checked by default(see pics) and if not unchecked the tool bar will be installed.

For IE users Sun made the change after using Google for quite some time.

With that info,

Safe Surfing!