WOW! That’s the typical response when people’s computer boots up in half the time it did just 10 minutes ago. Chances are quite good you can have this experience. Assuming your Windows computer is spyware, adware and virus-free, there are 5 simple steps you can easily do yourself or have your favourite IT person (we [...]

At least that’s the word from this banking industry report. The explosion of bogus antivirus “rogue” scams is largely responsible for the increase. Targeted phishing attacks (spear phishing) have also risen sharply. Corporate bank accounts are still the juiciest targets, but medium and even small businesses are also being attacked because they often have lower [...]

This will come as no big surprise to most of us, but the threat model for cybersecuriy has shifted considerably in the past couple years. Believe it or not, operating system security has gotten better. The number of vulnerabilities is down, and more people are getting automatic updates and keeping their operating systems patched. This [...]

It’s NOT the Tax Man – It’s ZEUS The biggest email phishing scam on the internet is aimed at Americans, but might even pull in a few Canadians who do business in the US. It asserts that US Internal Revenue Service is contacting you about unclaimed income. Most of us are afraid of those “two [...]

The password-stealing trojan Zeus, aka Zbot, PRG has gotten very good at evading antivirus. According to this study, 55% of the computers infected with this virus are running antivirus that is current. I was unable to find any information rating the ability of various antivirus programs to detect this threat, or whether it is detected [...]

An excellent solution to add some speed while surfing the internet, has many useful features and once you get used to use is really useful. Don’t just surf the web — command it! Ubiquity is a time-saving Firefox extension that simplifies common web activities by letting you give commands to Firefox. Ubiquity includes about 80 [...]

Xpdf Reader Adobe Vulnerabilities have been found in current versions of Foxit and Xpdf readers as well. Patches are not yet available, so open unsolicited .pdf files with care. A new round of website attacks is also exploiting un-patched web applications. These can be difficult to detect, because the malicious files have the same directory [...]

Today is “Patch Tuesday”, and Microsoft will be rolling out a record number of critical (8) and important (5) patches. There is also a patch for a critical vulnerability in Adobe Acrobat Reader due for release today. Adobe coordinates their patches with Microsoft’s patches to make the second Tuesday of every month doubly important. Checker [...]