Posts in category: Security

System hacks! Data Breach! Consumer information stolen! Identity theft! It seems these headlines appear more frequently and are enough to start the heart racing of businesses and consumers alike. Many don’t understand how this happens and think only big companies like Equifax, Target and Home Depot are vulnerable. Wrong.

Millions of innocent people are victims or potential victims of scams around the world each year. Sadly these scams are ever-changing and just as you think you know the latest scam another one pops up. Here are some scam-busting websites that can prevent you from being the next victim.

Over the years, although heard of, I have never fallen victim to a Gumtree scam although I have had several conversations with one. Recently I sold my home and I need to go into rented accommodation for 3 months, until my new house is available. With 3 weeks before the big move, I placed a little advert on Gumtree to see if anyone had any short-term lets available. Amazingly on waking the next morning, I had received several text messages from different people.

The following infographic, based on Arxan’s automotive IoT page, details the vulnerabilities of the connected car. By the year 2020, it is estimated that 75% of all cars will have internet connectivity. Taking this on board this leaves the door open for hackers who will exploit this technology.

Malware and unwanted software go hand-in-hand with the Internet. As technology has advanced so have the techniques to gain access to your computer, network and money. With Adware, crapware, DoS, pharming, malware, ransomware, trojans and much more we can’t be far off filling the A-Z of glossary of cybercrime definitions. However, if you are a little security conscious here are a few tools that may be able to help you.

Welcome to this week’s WOW Weekly. Dell got into a little hot water when a rogue root certificate was found on its systems. Xbox 360 celebrated its 10th Birthday. WordPress.com release a handy new piece of software for the Mac and the Raspberry Pi Zero is looking rather yummy.

Welcome to WOW Weekly.TalkTalk made big news last week when a massive cyber attack compromised the details of all it’s customers. TalkTalk have since announced the attack wasn’t as bad as first feared but will this be enough for the customers that want out! From Warty Warthog to Wily Werewolf Ubuntu is 11 years old! First released in 2004 the open source Linux distribution has gracefully transformed into the modern operating system we see today.

Arxan and iThreat Cyber Group have published The Application Security report detailing how the illegal reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material (piracy) on the web is growing rapidly. Over 1000 sites have been analyzed over the past 3.5 years are part of the dark web which is not indexed by standard search engines. 50 are in the business of distributing pirated releases.

As bizarre as this title sounds I haven’t taken up knitting as a hobby. Recently I was called by my friend whose Windows Vista computer had shut down on her and refused to restart. Being slightly curious I paid her a visit to be greeted with a computer that had gone into hyper hibernation mode. A simple long press of the power button turned it off and boy what was I greeted with when I restarted it.

Welcome to this weeks Wow weekly. My new design is well under way and I hope to be moving to my new theme pretty soon. Here is a selection of must-read posts for this week on getting started in IT, blogging, Adobe and the usual collection of design and development links.

No doubt you will have heard of spam, phishing, viruses and trojans by now. After all they are constantly a threat to our security and it is the main reason why we have firewalls and anti-viruses on our computers. Threats are not entirely computer based though you may be also subject to telephone calls from people pretending to be from your ISP or even from Microsoft themselves! Be aware of the scammer!

I have been using Comodo Internet Security since it’s initial release and it just keeps getting better and better. However whilst trying to install the most recent version 4.0 which was released on March 03 2010 I encountered an installation error 1603. Naturally I cleared all the junk files, disabled unnecessary services, cleared the registry and still couldn’t get it to work until I came across a handy clean up tool which cleans up leftover data from the previous installations.