Shoestring Solutions

Always practice safe computing:

Netwitness says Kneber is a ZeuS Trojan botnet, a type of botnet known for its capability to target and steal key information stored on your computer, such as login credentials.

‘Kneber’ Botnet Attacks PCs Worldwide: FAQ – PCWorld

Several recent industry articles report that we will continue to see a rise in the percentage of spam in overall email volumes:

• All Spammed Up reported "that spam has increased over 141% since March and also found that spam volumes grow by over 117 billion e-mails a day"
• McAfee has reported that in a little less than five months there has been a 140% increase in total spam volume. Reported causes are the 16% rise in botnet infections from Q1 2009 to Q2 2009. Many are also pointing a finger at the exploitation of social-networking sites for sending spam.
• MX Logic recently released their July 2009 Threat Forecast report claiming that "Spam as a percentage of overall mail has reached its highest point ever, currently accounting for 94.6 percent of all e-mail"

To protect yourself, we recommend just two things (besides a good antivirus program): Gmail or Google Apps for its spam-filtering (among many other reasons) and OpenDNS to protect your PC from bad stuff just in case you click on a bad link.

This is a critical issue. If you use Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, do this today.

Microsoft has released a Microsoft security advisory about this issue for IT professionals. The security advisory contains additional security-related information. To view the security advisory, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerability in Microsoft Video ActiveX control could allow remote code execution

According to T-Mobile, the document that was taken does not contain subscriber data:

T-Mobile admitted today that hackers had breached it’s security into its internal information. Weekend reports had stated that “operations, finance and subscriber data” had been stolen from T-Mobile, but it doesn’t appear that severe.

T-Mobile admits systems’ security breach | BlackBerryNews.com

You may not realize how much you could lose as a result of a hacker attack or takeover by a botnet (a large network of remotely-controlled PCs). The cost in terms of virus removal and hardware downtime could range into the hundreds; the cost in terms of lost or stolen data could be immeasurable.

Shoestring Solutions can optimize your workstations for top performance; protect them from hacker attacks—and keep them running right– for as low as $20 a month per PC. Contact us today for more information!

A small or midsize business (SMB) is ultimately a more attractive target for spammers, botnet operators, and other attackers than a home user mainly because it has a treasure trove of valuable data without the sufficient IT and security resources to protect it.

Security experts say that while large enterprises are getting hit hard by bot infections and related attacks, it’s the SMBs that are getting hurt the worst. Home machines are obviously the easiest targets, but SMBs are relatively defenseless, as well, given their lack of IT resources and budgets to build out layered security like the big boys do.

SMBs Often Hit Hardest By Botnets – DarkReading