News

Malware plague continues

I just wanted to put out another reminder about how bad the malware (viruses, trojans, etc) plague continues to be, for both Windows and Mac users. First is a report outlining that bugs in the Adobe Flash browser plugin dominated the list of how malware made it onto users' computers, with 6 out of 10 exploits being related to bugs in Adobe Flash. This emphasises how important it is to keep your Adobe Flash plugin updated. However, the flipside to this is how many sites know people care about this and will try and trick users into installing malware by making them look like legitimate Flash updaters. Because of this, I advise all my clients anytime they are concerned if their Flash plug-in is out of date to ignore any links provided, and instead go straight and explicity to the source by typing in:

https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

When you get there, before you download be sure to uncheck any "Optional offers" presented to you, to avoid bundled junk you don't want.

Second is a recent article that mentions how "ransomware attacks against businesses increased threefold in 2016". Ransomware continues to be a growing epidemic as malware authors have discovered users are prone to paying with the (usually vain) hope that they'll get their data back, making ransomware far more lucrative to the malware authors than previous ways of cashing in on their malware, such as selling personal data to marketers and spammers. Remember though that only a small percentage of victims who pay the "ransom" actually get the key to decrypt their data, and those that do simply encourage the problem to grow. The proper (and often only) way to deal with a ransomware attack is to revert to your backups, so be sure you have a solid backup scheme in place that you perform and check on a regular basis.

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