Yes, they are in the business of providing anti-virus, security software and data protection…it’s a commercial business that we found years ago from RackSpace our data center (voted best in NA and I’ll talk about their fanatical support at another time, eh!) — but what I like about SOPHOs is more — much more than that, eh!

First, there’s the software that you can get free trials and downloads on, just click and save and install. Then there are the free tools that offer up remote looks at your computer for everything from rootkits to network scans  that utilize their most up-to-date technologies and information. Then there are their enterprise level demos that can help with endpoint security from everything from email spam to MS Exchange management too. And if that’s not enough, they also have both pre-recorded live webinars on tons of topics and higher-end appliance demos too that you can register for right on their site. And then there’s the Hot Topics area….that’s chock full of more security notes too — go here to see same! And then there’s their “Threat Spotlight” that offers up daily updates on all things unsecure and web browsing, email phishing too. Trot over there for a good read anytime, eh!

All of that is great…but for many of you who’ve noticed a “new” widget on our site, yes….as you can see it’s the latest Safe Web Security widget from SOPHOS….that offers the following –

• Potentially dangerous sites
• How to choose a strong password
• The need to keep web browsers updated
• Staying safe on Facebook

It’s down there on the far right hand sidebar here on our site. When you land, it clicks itself “on” and then shows you in a few screens information about how to browse safely! These simple tips include pointers on all of the above and a click on the arrows will load either previous or next screens if you click on same, or they’ll all appear in a slide show.

Take a gander at same. They’re great tips and ones we should ALL remember in today’s browsing of the web, eh! It’s totally free. You can add it to your blog for free. It is GREAT info…and there is a full further many page .pdf too if you wish to know more about Safe Web Browsing, eh! Now that’s a deal to anyone anywhere!

Oh, one furtther thing to consider. SOPHOs is in the business of web security, so yes, they have top notch bloggers that post news and exploit discoveries almost daily. My own favourite is by Chester Wisniewski, and his blog always has something of value in it every single post….and here’s  a link to all that are offered…

Disclaimer: SOPHOs…we don’t know anybody there, we get nada from them financially now or ever and we expect only the help educate you readers on a great security asset you can get yourownselves, eh! So go…read…research…and gain security, eh!

There. I said it. But, in this case, using AVG, the well known and respected anti-virus program to “aid” my using Google has helped…and let me explain.

First, I was in a forum where other web developers/SEO practitioners look for help and I’d answered a couple of SEO type queries, when I saw a complaint by someone who was offshore, ie non-North American based. They said, at least from what I gathered, that they’d had their account ‘suspended’ by the PayPal people and wondered if anyone else had had that happen. I take it, that they were interested in learning how to get their account ‘un-suspended’ to get paid and access their funds.

So, knowing that many many folks who get upset at a company will often use their spite and go and buy a domain to slam the offending firm, I figured I’d put in a simple “paypal sucks” into the google.ca search field and see what I got…and AVG stepped up and let me know right away, that one of the sites in the search results, got me the new-to-me red X that meant Oh-Oh — here’s that warning box to look over the info tendered –

 WARNING: DO NOT GO TO THIS SITE!!!!!

As you can see by the listing, AVG provided full info on that domain, including the warning that going to such a site contains “active threats” and that the Risk Category for same site was listed as an “exploit server!”

Did I say, nah…I don’t believe it and click that link anyhow? NOT on your life….a warning like that is warning that I believe is true…and as such, I knew that while I’d forget ever going to that site, I did wonder…how many others who do NOT have AVG on their browser watch, might have…and how many rue’d the day they did.

So…AVG? Great product in my mind….check them out here….and while no browser watch 3rd party add-on can protect you from all things, the AVG app surely begins that task for anyone who goes and buys same! Oh, they even have a free anti-virus app too….that’s still pretty good and it too caught this same exploit server as well as I happened to be on a box here at the office that uses the AVG:Free one!

Now hows’ that for a great add-on app, eh?

I mean come on, eh? There’s only so much to research and once you determine how many Canadians you can stock in the “beer crisper,” how much more do you need to know, eh?

Ahh…but that’s not ALL that this well known, big-rep magazine offers to it’s readers, I’ve just learned!

Go out today and see if you can find the June 2010 issue (cover shown) and then open it up to the Consumer Reports feature story on the “State of the NET Survey for 2010!” And what a great piece of reporting that is, eh! Here’s a blurb from the report summary –

“Fifty-two percent of adult users of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have posted risky personal information online, according to the 2010 Consumer Reports State of the Net survey. And many haven’t used their service’s privacy controls to protect themselves. According to findings from the survey cited in the Consumer Reports investigation, Social Insecurity, 23 percent of the users of Facebook, the largest social network, either didn’t know that site offered privacy controls or chose not to use them…”

And as you can tell from that comment, many many of us social users do NOT use privacy controls to protect our own information, profiles and yes, even our contacts either! While that may not be that important to users, it appears as a whole, I can assure you that it is very very important to hackers, to scammers, to spammers and to everyone else who want’s to put their hand in your pocket! We all outta be ashamed, eh! And their numbers are pretty astounding too after this national survey.

Two out of three households in the US use social sites like Facebook or MySpace, a rise of 50% in one year alone! And CR reports that this usage led to cybercrime costing $4.5 Billion (that’s with a B, eh!) US dollars in the past two years…and if Canada runs at the pretty standard 10% factor, that’s $450 Million dollars up here. And that’s sad as for the most part, almost ALL of this kind of cybercrime can be avoided via privacy protection. Here’s a quick look at some of the Survey numbers fyi…and yes it’s available here too online….

A good read should be required here….there’s a lot of great examples and yes, even samples of some of us who were “caught” by those cyberscammers and what the issues were to lead to that problem — and who paid for same in the end too. Oh, and there’s seven great tips for learning more about what NOT TO DO ON Facebook too….give that a read as well!

Consumers Report magazine…never ever bought same, but I’m going to sign up for a full subscription today, eh! Might as well learn about a fridge too, eh!

SOPHOS is the anti-virus, security company with more than 100 million users globally and yes, we use their products our own selves but did NOT receive anything for this article <note my disclaimer is now OFF>.

So, what’s the scoop, SOHPOS? First, here’s the executive summary from their recent Acrobat .pdf posting on their site found here…

“This paper describes recent research by SophosLabs into how attackers are using blackhat Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques to stuff legitimate websites with content designed to rank highly in search engine results, yet redirect users to malicious sites. These websites are being used to distribute rogue security products (also known as “scareware” or “fake antivirus”) onto users’ computers. Sophos researchers have analysed the malicious SEO kits used by hackers to create networks of thousands of crosslinked pages containing searchfriendly content on hottrending topics, hosted on compromised, legitimate websites…”

Hmm…you’re asking…exactly what are we talking about here? Simple, reallly….the latest technique used by Blackhat SEO scammers who are looking to infect your computer or network is to use hot topics, plugged into search engines like Google, to get you to click on same.

Perhaps an example is needed. Remember the recent Haiti earthquake? Well, it was used (as are many many hot topics from celebrity marriage breakups to elected officials trysts or even the recent hoax reports of Kanye Wests’ death) to “poison” the serps (search engine ranking pages) with new sites that if clicked on WOULD infect your computer. We call them a “drive-by” infection in the computer world as simply landing on that web page will infect your machine….as noted, with anything from phony scareware to serious malware and yes, viruses too!

 So, how much is this affecting say North America and Canada in particular? Here’s  a map pulled from the SOPHOS .pdf that shows just such numbers across the globe…. Note the large numbers of NA infections and yes, Canada too (while I had to shrink down this map to include same here, it’s full sized in the SOPHOS .pdf if you wish to see it in more detail, eh!)

The .pdf article develops much more than what I’ve covered herein, and it’s recent information that can help us all learn what the best way to “find” news on hot topics can be…and while I’m trying not to steal the SOPHOS conclusions, it’s best to read the doc itself, but here’s a part of same –

“Malware distribution through SEO attacks could easily be described as beautiful in its simplicity. A straightforward case of trickery, without the need for exploits or zeroday vulnerabilities. Just a case of tricking the search engines into indexing rogue SEO pages and then tricking users into running the fake antivirus malware (and subsequently paying to register it). This simplicity should not detract from the success of such attacks however. And whilst the attacks continue to succeed, there is little need for the malware authors and distributors to change the formula.”

 

All of them have “other” sites…that is while we look after their major corporate sites for both SEO and in many cases CMS or web development in general, they also maintain on their own, secondary sites that are either “hobby” sites (model airplane kit building is one example) or sports sites (their son’s hockey team site) and all four of them have been hit in the past week with the Google malware warning notices! Looks like malware attacks via domain insertions is back, eh! Where they trick you into coming to their site, infect your machine, grab your FTP logins and then upload hacked code to your site!  For more info from Google on this matter, click here….

The thing is, and this is somewhat hard to understand, that for the most part these sites are “minor” players on the world wide web stage. They are about airplane kit building, and where to get that exact type of rivet template or decal for the 8th Squadron…etc. Very ‘teensy’ import to the rest of the world and that tells me much, eh! If someone then is getting malware onto those domains in any way shape or form, then to me, that means that they are NOT targeting such sites via a “rifled” attack, but that they’re using a “shotgun” approach to target everyone. Want to know more about malware? Click here to go to the wikipedia site to read up on the subject….

And that’s a bad thing, as that kind of mindless idiocrity is more “kiddie scripter” than “hacker” and that’s a dang shame for us all. Why these idiots would bother to attack a model airplane kit building site, is beyond me…and shows that just plain studpidity!

So, what can you “do” about that? Well, while I publically almost never ever mention purchased software a couple of items come to mind, that we use on our own computers here at the offices and that I always at least mention to our clients when they come on board.

First, is AVG – and yes, there is a very good, free version out there too! Go to their site and click on the Free version download, install and then instead of you “seeing” the type of google search results you see above, you’d see this type –

As you can see, AVG puts a notice RIGHT in the google results that shows you that this site for example, has a potential to infect your computer. It will not stop you from clicking on same, but you are at the very least warned that such an action can cost you dearly….

The AVG additions to the google results areas can of course be turned on or off and that allows you to “see” threats (at least as compiled by AVG) in any google search results page…a dang good thing in our way of thinking, eh! And their Pro version is even better, in my mind and available at a small cost too….

And that’s not all, either. It’s also not often that I get to mention a friend, but over at SiteSecurityMonitor, my friend there Jason has crafted a terrric application that can both monitor your sites on a daily basis and inform you the moment that there has been a change to same — but also that you can ask for a free malware scan to check on your site’s “health” at any time! Pop over to that site and take a look/see….and check out his Plans & Pricing page too….site security is one of the most important things needed in this web world, and they provide same, eh!

(Note: full disclaimer here would point out that we have no stake in this site service but we do know Jason and know that after years in security for BigBlue, he’ knows his stuff, eh!)

As you can see, this is a older image that occured awhile back (for google itself even!) but the intent of course was that Google would inform users that the site that they showed in their results page, could harm a site vistiors computer, including of course, the unknowing “drive-by download” infection.

What’s a “drive-by download” infection? Ah…. here’s  a great link to a site that explains that among other malware glossary items…or then again there’s a Wikipedia on same here too. But that’s not the only kind of malware that can affect a user, ie not only on your website, but on your own computer too!

My point today is that Sunbelt Software, one of the web’s premiere security software firms last week released some latest figures on their Top 10 Malware Threats…and “drive-by downloads” to a user’s own computer, are still up there! To see more of their latest survey results, including that list of Top 10 items, go here to view same. And please do note, that they also show that using SEO, hackers will now use popular search terms to try to get website traffic to infect their vistors computers!!! Here’s the list from today’s report –

• “Brittany Murphy” (leads to redirect sites selling rogues)
• “chromium os download” (leads to rogue download sites)
• “New Year’s Parades”
• “Tiger Woods car crash” (sites offer videos with Trojanized video viewers)
• “Tiger Woods rumors”

Trojans, it appears still hold the majority of the rankings, where you are infected, and you dont’ even know it…but yes there are symptoms that you suffer and here’s a short list to pay attention too — do you suffer from any of these?

• You do a search, and you end up on a new strange search site instead of your chosen one (Google most likely, eh)?
• Your firewall or anti-virus is turned off somehow?
• You see lots of network or taskbar CPU usage, but you’re not doing anything to generate that kind of traffic?
• Do strange icons appear on your desktop, or shortcuts that you never remember installing?
• Do you get notices from your firewall that a process needs to be okayed, but you don’t recognize same?
• Lastly, that if you’re worried and you try to open up your anti-virus it flickers only and then closes?

All of these of course, with many many others are symptoms that you’ve been infected….and the bad news is that you do need to fix same….else, your computer is now compromised and your performance and trustworthyness will sink greatly! You will then need to go to your anti-virus software website to search there on how to find a cure ie to dis-install the Trojan that has infected you via a drive-by download. All major anti-virus software firms offer up just that kind of aid, as well of course as you could also Google for help using say “how to disinfect my computer” or “trojan removal tools” or “malware removal guides” too….

No matter what you choose to remove same, you should also check on any of the online forums for various posts (search for your help cues via the name of the Trojan that is found on your computer) on how others removed same.

Trojans….real threats….from real idiots! My apologies to one and all on behalf of us “computer types” eh! …sigh….