R Web Security

Privacy is not dead, says SXSWi keynoter Boyd

R Web Security — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 02:46:44 +0000

Recent PR debacles surrounding Google Buzz and Facebook’s privacy settings have put the spotlight on basic misunderstandings by tech companies about how people use social media.

Originally posted at Geek Gestalt

Block, Avoid, Identify Paypal, EBay, Bank Phishing Emails with Iconix

R Web Security — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 08:17:59 +0000

Identity Frauds through Phishing Emails are growing by each passing day. More and more Internet users are getting scammed and losing their privacy and money to these scams.

And many times, it is due to some careless online behavior from the user itself, which is responsible for him to be a victim. A few careful steps can help you great deal to identify and prevent falling in the trap.

One of the common way to trap innocent users is to send fake emails looking to be from a genuine source like Paypal, Ebay or your Bank. Often a careful look at the email for the sign of phishing might help you to identify and avoid phishing emails. But due to the lack of knowledge and carelessness people ignore to remain cautious and get trapped.

Iconix – A Handy Way to Identify and Avoid Phishing Emails

Iconix is a freeware plugin, which when installed, gets seamless integrated with most of the Email clients and checks the original source of the emails. If the email is coming from a popular financial institution or website, which are often targeted by the phishing scammers, then a lock icon along with the tick mark appear before the sender’s name. This identifies that the source of the email is genuine.

If you want more details about this, then you can click on the icon, which will open a TrueMark Certificate verifying the source of the email.

Iconix uses industry standard technologies like DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), a standard established many years ago and led by Yahoo! and Cisco. It uses public key encryption to prove not only that the message sender is authenticated, but that it has not been modified in transit.

[Download Iconix]

Microsoft races to plug IE hole after exploit code released

R Web Security — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:07:01 +0000

Software giant’s patch process speeds up after researcher releases code on Net that can be used to target the vulnerability and take over PCs.

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex

When malware strikes via bad ads on good sites

R Web Security — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:24:08 +0000

Who is responsible for malware in ads, Web site owners or ad networks and delivery firms?

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex

How to Protect Your Online Reputation

R Web Security — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:22:02 +0000

By Doctor Security

Looking for a new job or a new significant other? If you don’t want to lose out on a good one, you need to make sure your “online reputation” doesn’t sabotage your efforts. Welcome to the über-connected world of the 21^st century.

It is pretty obvious that you need to start managing and protecting your online reputation. Seriously. H.R. people and college recruiters routinely conduct Web searches on candidates.

You need to know what is posted “out there” about you in order to address any issues before anything unflattering waylays your career or your love life. Start by searching your name by putting it inside quotes in multiple search engines (Google, Ask, Yahoo, Bing). Example: “Dr. Security”

Note – if you have a very common name, add the city, or middle initial, or whatever term you think the H.R. or potential lover might enter to narrow down the search and learn more about you. Example: “Dr. I.M. Security”

If all good stuff is revealed at the top of the list, you can go about your life confidently. However, it’s wise to do this self search exercise periodically to maintain the online identity you want the wired world to see. Also, if you’re not already doing it, create two online profiles, one professional (public) and one personal (private).

If the results aren’t what you want a potential employer or paramour to see, then it’s time to try and do something about it. If negative information is on a site that you control like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, simply delete the material you don’t want seen and tighten up your profile privacy settings. (See my previous blog on Facebook privacy settings here.)

If the objectionable stuff is on a site you don’t control, you can try contacting the Web site administrator and making a request. Be respectful, but if you have to pester someone to clean the slate, pester.

If all else fails, at least have a good explanation if and when you are confronted with some embarrassing evidence of your poor judgment. Try to do better than: “I was young and needed the money…”

ISP interruptions trip up Zeus botnet

R Web Security — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:21:53 +0000

But the source of the Zeus banking Trojan is back in action after unidentified agents cut off upstream connectivity to an ISP in Kazakhstan.

Hotmail Allows Secure SSL Encrypted Login

R Web Security — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:56:16 +0000

We just carried a post on how to make your Hotmail account more secured by ensuring that your Hotmail Password gets expired after every 72 hours. There is yet another way to make your Homail account still more secure by ensuring to use encrypted SSL login to your Hotmail account. Google has introduced this early in its GMail last year.

You have to click the link “Use Enhanced Security (SSL)” at the bottom to use this feature. Based upon your cookie settings, this option will be stored, and the next time when you login, this feature will be automatically selected.

You can turn it off any time, by clicking “Turn Off Enhanced Security (SSL)” option, if you think that it is slowing down your browser speed. But I strongly recommend you to use this feature to protect your Hotmail Login.

Start Hotmail Secure Login – Expire Passwords After 72 hours

R Web Security — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:56:16 +0000

Even with the popularity of the Email services like Yahoo and GMail dominating the web-based email service marketplace, Hotmail is still used by plenty of users worldwide.

To make its services more secured, Hotmail has now allowed its users to let their passwords expire after 72 hours, if they opt for it. This may sound as added hassles for many of the users, but if you are really concerned about the security of the passwords, then this is for you. Opting this option, will require you to reset your password after 72 hours.

You can use this link to use this hotmail security feature.

Researcher publishes exploit for new IE hole

R Web Security — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:52:39 +0000

Clues in McAfee blog post led researcher to existing exploit code which he analyzed to write his own code.

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex

LimeWire enlists AVG for user protection

R Web Security — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:49:28 +0000

Notorious as a malware ghetto, LimeWire takes its first steps to integrate authoritative threat protection by signing on AVG to provide premium users with download scanning and blocking.

Originally posted at The Download Blog