In the majority of email systems, if you hover your cursor over the Sender's name in your Inbox, a tooltip appears next to the cursor, that will show you the email address of the Sender. If the email address you see is YOURS, be wary, because that email is almost certainly from a scammer/hacker, and is looking to do you harm. These emails may purport to be from a company or organization, and may be in regard to anything, from telling you about a "special offer" or somethnig "you've won", or perhpas that there's "something wrong" with your computer or something you need to "take action" on right away.

The idea is that the scammers are trying to create a sense of urgency and/or panic within you, so that you don't spend time thinking, but that you feel you need to click on their message or link, or call their phone number right away. The problem is, the link they want you to click, or the number they want you to call, is where the problems begin. Take that extra moment to do your due diligence. The extra minute you take to discern whether that email, or that popup on your screen, or that text message is legit, may save you hours, or even days, of headache & heartache, dealing with banks and credit card companies, and everything that goes with cancelling cards, changing passwords, etc.
Be aware and be safe, my friends.

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which was created in 2015, is being used, not only by regular citizens for legitimate purposes, but also by malicious attackers, to send phishing emails to people, in an effort to get them to click on links in legitimate sounding emails, in order to compromise the user's computer and/or gain login credentials from the user. The attackers are trying to coax the user into clicking on a button or link, which would resolve to a URL such as ipfs.io and other top-level domains that are being used, as well.

As always, if you ever receive messages, phone calls out of the blue, texts, emails, etc., that want you to click on a link or button, or call a phone number, be suspicious. Do not call the number or click the link, but instead, directly call or go to a company's website, using a phone number or bookmark you already have. If there really is some sort of problem with an account, a customer service representative will be able to see it in their system.

You can read a very good article about IPFS being used for phishing at Trustwave.

Apple and major security researchers are urging users of Apple devices to immediately update the operating systems in their devices, to patch a serious iMessage security flaw that is known to have already infected deices "in the wild".

Utilizing code from a malware package known as Pegasus, this variant, which has been dubbed "FORCEDENTRY" by the research group Citizen Lab, due to its ability to bypass "BlastDoor" protections that Apple had added to its operating system, to attempt to block such attacks.

While it seems that devices so far have been selectively targeted, as time goes on, malware is often put to use by a wider array of attackers, to compromise devices used by average people, and this attack requires NO INTERACTION on the part of a user. If your device is unpatched, and can receive iMessage messages, then IT IS VULNERABLE.

Apple's security patches will update devices to iOS & iPad OS 14.8, macOS Big Sur 11.6, macOS Catalina (security update 2021-005), and watchOS 7.6.2 for the respective devices.

Although devices that cannot run iOS / iPad OS 14, MacOS 10.15 or 16, or watchOS7 will not be able to be updated with a patch for this vulnerability, most devices that can't would be at least several years old. A list of iPhones that can run iOS 14 & iPads that can run iPad OS 14 can be found here, all Mac computers that can run (at least) MacOS 10.15 Catalina can be found here, and as for Apple watches, the original & 2nd generation watches will not be able to install this patch, but all watches from generation 3 onward are capable of running both watchOS 7 & 8.

Several good articles detailing the Pegasus malware and FORCEDENTRY can be found here, here, here, here, & here.

In the past two months, police from New Delhi have made 63 arrests among 26 call centers that are set up to pose as tech support people from Microsoft, Apple, Google, and other large technology companies. Thousands of calls have been received, by Microsoft and other companies, from people who have been defrauded by these groups. The raids on the various call centers reaped piles of evidence, and even though this is just a dent in the overall tech scam universe, it is a good start.

Remember the following information from Microsoft:
  1) Microsoft will never proactively reach out to you to provide unsolicited PC or technical support. Any communication we have with you must be initiated by you.
  2) Be wary of any unsolicited phone call or pop-up message on your device.
  3) Do not call the phone number in a pop-up window on your device and be cautious about clicking on notifications asking you to scan your computer or download software. Many scammers try to fool you into thinking their notifications are legitimate.
  4) Never give control of your computer to a third party unless you can confirm that it is a legitimate representative of a computer support team with whom you are already a customer.
  5) If skeptical, take the person's information down and immediately report it to your local authorities.

You really should read the entire article. Well worth the time!

I guess this is one of those situations that shows just how difficult good, secure software development really must be. A bug in the core of the Windows operating system, which was brought to attention earlier this year, could be exploited by malware (spyware, viruses, etc.), to prevent security software from detecting them. This programming error affects all versions of the Windows operating system from Windows 2000 onward. You can see a list of them here (just start reading the chart from Windows 2000 and after). The summary and full article are worth a read. The technical details of the bug are available here.

This is not shaping up to be a good year for the security of some of Microsoft's biggest products, with last month's Word doc flaw, and this month now as well, with a HUGE flaw in the Windows Defender scanning engine, which is built into (and affecting) Windows 7, Windows 8 & 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2016. A few other less notable products are also affected. On Monday, Microsoft issued the security advisory for CVE-2017-0290, a remote-code execution flaw, originally reported to Redmond by Google Project Zero security research experts Natalie Silvanovich and Tavis Ormandy. Ormandy tweeted "I think @natashenka and I just discovered the worst Windows remote code exec in recent memory. This is crazy bad. Report on the way." To Microsoft's credit, they issued the patch only a couple days after receiving the information, which is much faster than many recent vulnerabilities have been fixed.

For many people, the .doc file is the de-facto word processing standard. Microsoft is scrambling to patch a flaw in the Office Suite's .doc file that could allow an attacker to take complete control over a victim's PC just by opening a carefully crafted Word document, whether it be by downloading it or by opening it from an email attachment, making it ripe for use as a social engineering attack vector. Cybersecurity firm FireEye stated they are coordinating with Microsoft on the problem, which comes from the Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) feature.

For this year's Pwn2Own 2017 hacking event in March, Microsoft's new Edge web browser for Windows 10 seemed to take a beating. Contrary to the PR that Microsoft is putting out, touting the speed and security of their latest browser, it turned out that Google Chrome proved to be the most secure browser, with none of the participants being able to find any new method for hacking into Chrome. This year's score: 5 successful hacks against Edge, three and a half against Apple's Safari browser, one success against Firefox, and none for Chrome.

While it should not come as a great surprise to many, given the bad rep that Windows Vista earned with the public, Microsoft will end ALL support for the Windows Vista operating system on April 11th, 2017. No more bug fixes. No more security patches. Not even paid corporate customers will get support. It has been 10 years since Vista was released, which is a lot longer than other companies support their operating systems. Other software vendors have already taken this path, with web browsers and many major software packages no longer allowing their installer to run of Vista computers. With Windows 7 having been a comparatively huge success, there shouldn't be too many holdouts still running Vista, but for those who still do, be prepared for your machine to become less secure with each passing month of use.

One of the latest attempts to gain access to people's account information is using one of the most popular email services in the country. While this attack is currently limited to Gmail, users of all email services would be wise to keep an open eye, as this particular tricky approach could eventually be modified to work with any email service, since virtually all of them allow for attachments and links of various kinds, which is how the attackers are tricking people into clicking what they believe to be a legitimate attachment, which is in turn linked to a fake Google/Gmail login page, that then collects the victims' usernames and passwords.

For whatever reason, Microsoft is VERY anxious to get everyone moved over to the Windows 10 operating system. They have now taken the additional step - as it seems not enough people have taken the bait to accept the free upgrade from the annoying little icon down it the right side of the Taskbar - to put Windows 10 Upgrade into the "Recommended Updates" section of Windows Update. So if you have your computer set to get Recommended Updates the same way it gets Important Updates, you could find yourself in a situation where it could automatically install the Windows 10 upgrade. Please be aware that we have seen some of our clients have problems with their computer (they didn't call us first to ask about it) after upgrading to Windows 10, due to software that was ALREADY on their computer that it not compatible with parts of Windows 10.

I want one. I really do. I think that they are actually, from an operational standpoint, safer than skateboards. There's been talk about a number of injuries from people that are riding these, but I'd bet money that if you added up all of the skateboard injuries compared to the number of skateboarders, it would be a far higher percentage than the percentage of "hoverboard" users that have had injuries. That's not to say that the average person won't fall or slip when using one of these, but that there are any number of ride-able kids toys that people are getting hurt on, that aren't being banned from public streets and sidewalks. But on to my larger point: Even the few companies that make (relatively) high quality devices are still buying batteries from many different sources, based on price and availability, and therein lies the problem. Industry analysts figure there are over 150 factories, just in China, that are producing these units and the batteries they use. So it's nearly impossible to know where a battery came from in nearly any of these 2-wheeled wonders. It's the fact that there are a number of these that are just catching on fire or exploding, even when not connected to a charger, that is the biggest safety problem. It's like Russian Roulette for toys. At least a regular skateboard isn't going to suddenly blow up or catch on fire. Until there are manufacturers that are making these units and using batteries that are coming from know sources that they can trace back to, that are passing rigorous quality control testing, this is still one item that gives the wrong meaning to "hottest toy of the season".

Here is news that reports on what we've been reminding many of our clients about for quite some time. You get a call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft or another tech company and that they see your computer is infected. Or you get a similar message in a popup window on your PC with a phone number to call. More often than not (most of the time, actually), these calls and popups are completely bogus. If you let these people into your PC remotely, they can install hidden backdoors or even malware that could encrypt your files. Remember, if you get a unsolicited call from out of the blue, or a popup window that does not explicitly identify itself as a software product you know for certain is installed on your system, treat it with suspicion.

For about a week, Yahoo inadvertently displayed ads on its' web properties which had infected code, designed to take advantage of a security hole in Adobe Flash Player browser plugin software. The "malvertising" campaign was discovered by Malwarebytes researchers (we have long recommended their software to our clients). The attack has finally been resolved, but Yahoo! websites have hundreds of millions of visitors each week, so it would be difficult to determine the (potentially huge) numbers of computers that could have been potentially affected by this breach.

Now that Windows 10 has been released by Microsoft, it's giving the scammers yet another opportunity to see who they can sucker in with another bogus email: this one claiming to have the Windows 10 installer as an attachment. It is, of course, actually a bad piece of malware, which can lock you out of (encrypt) all the files on your computer. PLEASE READ EVERY email you get CAREFULLY, looking for mis-spellings, bad grammar, etc.
NOTE: You will be notified via the Windows Update Service on your computer, not by an email, when your Windows 10 updater is ready to be downloaded, if you have signed up for it.

I've been telling people about these kinds of scams for years. Whether it's the commercials on TV, an ad on some website, or a "piggyback" installer included with some other program or update which you may actually need (I'm pointing a finger at you, Java), fake PC cleaning/speed-up/registry/protection programs are out there, seemingly everywhere, and what seems like a great deal at first, can end up making your life more miserable than ever. I have had clients who were taken in by some of these bandits before they came to me, and a couple lost over $700 and were then locked out of their computer when they wanted to cancel their "service".

Well, some of these scammers are finally seeing their day in court. A Federal Court has even shut down operations and frozen assets for some organizations, because the harm they see happening is so great and can affect so many innocent people, that it would be criminal to let them continue while these cases are being wrapped up in the courts. PC Cleaner and Boost Software are among organizations and individuals perpetrating these scams. Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said, "These operations prey on consumers’ lack of technical knowledge with deceptive pitches and high-pressure tactics to sell useless software and services to the tune of millions of dollars...." and this is happening every day, all over this country.

The time for this to stop is now! One of the easiest things you can do to keep junk like this off of your computer is to do a couple minutes of search by typing in the name of the program or company into Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. and if the first page or two of results is glowing reviews and links to the software being sold on legitimate sites like Amazon, Fry's, Best Buy, etc., then great, maybe it's worth a try; but if those first pages are full of security websites talking about it in a negative way or telling you how to get it off of your PC, or forum posts with people asking how to get rid of it, then that should be a red flag that you don't want it on your system.

You should read this article right now. It may save you from a lot of grief later.
 

What started as a limited problem, targeting a regional bank, has now escalated to global proportions affecting major banks in the United States, Canada, and several other countries. This attack has infiltrated both the servers of large banking institutions as well as the computers of their customers via social engineering, injection code, and network sniffing techniques. This article describes Tinba in some detail, along with a list of the affected banks. This serves as another reminder of how important it is to keep your anti-virus and spyware protection, your Operating System, as well as your internet connected apps and plug-ins (Flash, Silverlight, Java, Adobe Reader, web browsers, etc.) patched and up to date.

Anybody want a great price on an iPhone?!? The promise of a good deal is once again responsible for luring unsuspecting eBay customers into a trap, designed to trick them into divulging their sensitive account information. A legitimate looking fake eBay login page was presented to users when they clicked on links in the bogus listing(s). In addition to people giving up account password information to the perpetrators, there was malicious code running in the background which could slip in through unpatched vulnerabilities to carry out further actions on the visitor's computer. Although eBay officials downplayed the number of impostor listings, even a couple of fake item pages could potentially impact thousands of people.

So far for the first half of this year, there have been more than twice as many (public) vulnerabilities and exploits for IE than for all of 2013, according to research by Bromium Labs, a security research and security endpoint management company. While exploits for the Chrome and Firefox browsers are on track for a major decline in vulnerabilities from last year, as are well known technologies such as Adobe Reader and Flash, Internet Explorer continues to be a favorite target of hackers. Java, by contrast, has not experienced a single public vulnerability so far this year, even though it had been the leader in vulnerabilities last year. We would venture to guess that Mac users, who experience a lower number of security threats (because of the smaller percentage of market penetration), are not missing that fact that Internet Explorer for Mac was discontinued well over a decade ago.

Security companies are constantly testing virus and spyware protection offerings from the major players in the game. Recently, reviews of Microsoft Security Essentials have been less than stellar, at a time when computer and data security is high in the public consciousness. Microsoft, in a typical corporate 'pass-the-buck' response, said their product was not intended to offer more than "baseline" protection. Since a PC should never have more than one full-blown anti-virus solution installed, because of the resources involved and the potential for conflicts, this makes us wonder why they would ever bother to release this type of product in the first place.

Windows XP will be 13 years old by April 2014, when Microsoft stops releasing updates for the operating system. Three major operating systems have been released for Windows desktop PCs since then. It's an enigma that in an age where the trend is toward always having the newest technology and devices, that an operating system this old is still in use on such a large percentage of active computers. So, many of these users however, deal with the knowledge and frustration of their computers not performing how they once did. One reason is, as newer and newer (versions of) programs are installed, which require more and more resources, that older systems often struggle to match the performance of a newer PC running that same app. A new (and more troubling) problem has been discovered that is actually programmed right into Windows XP itself. More specifically, it's part of the Windows Update system that's integrated into XP that is the culprit. An algorithm that determines what updates might be needed, was written in such a way that each subsequent patch causes the subsystem to take an exponentially longer amount of time to process that list, causing a large amount of resources to be eaten up when the computer starts. It can take an hour or more to process that list, once a PC is a few years old. Microsoft has tried to issue fixes for this condition, but so far their real world effects are not showing themselves to every day users.

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission busted a half-dozen fake tech support groups for perpetrating similar scams. Now it seems that new groups have stepped in to take their place, offering bogus services, sometimes with spoofed US phone numbers, and separating unsuspecting victims from their money and using their credit card information for further illegal gains. We at MBS have helped clean computers that have been compromised by these groups, who often leave tracking or spying software on the computers in order to get more of the customer's information. Just remember that if you receive a phone call out of the blue from anyone telling you that your computer has a problem and they're calling you to "help fix it", that not even Microsoft has the money and resources it would take to keep tabs on the hundreds of millions of computers in the USA, so they could somehow be notified when your computer developed a problem. Apparently, only the NSA may have that kind of capability.

A common USB stick, also known as a flash drive, was brought on board the International Space Station, and managed to infect the SCADA computer systems on board, according to Eugene Kaspersky, founder of the popular Anti-virus software company that bears his name. This is not the fist time that computers aboard the ISS have been hit by infections.

Facebook issued a message from its' White Hat program on Friday stating that a technical flaw in the way user information that is uploaded into their database, and linked with their Friend Recommendation system, exposed the user contact information to some other Facebook users who used the Download Your Information (DYI) tool to download an archive copy of their Facebook account. This problem actually started last year, but was only recently discovered. Facebook has issued a fix for the affected code, according to their blog. You can read the full message directly on the Facebook.com website.

The Crisis malware, originally reported on last month, has been discovered to be a monster threat, compared to security researchers' original estimations.
Well, I hate to be one of the bearers of bad news, but things just keep getting worse for Mac users out there in virus land. This time though, the bad guys are bringing it to a whole new level. In what may be a 'first of its kind' scenario, this security threat can actually break through the 'sandbox' walls, so to speak, and make its way onto a (VMware) virtual machine, by actively searching out virtual machines and copying itself onto them. This has traditionally been one of the big benefits of running virtual machines, in that they are separated from the host computer, so that a compromised virtual machine, running in its own little world, can't infect the host computer (although technically speaking this is doing the inverse of that process). The other part of this that has the potential to be a game changer is that this can also migrate onto Windows Mobile devices, which can then be synced with multiple PCs, further spreading the infection. Fortunately, at this time, iOS and Android devices appear not to be susceptible to infection.

The iOS operating system used by iPhone and iPad has a serious SMS spoofing flaw, which has just been discovered by a security researcher. The individual who discovered the flaw, and goes by the online name "pod2g", rates this flaw as "severe" and has found that the flaw allows an attacker to falsify (or spoof) the number that the SMS text message is coming from. This could lead the receiver into believing the message was coming from a friend, your bank, or virtually anyone the attacker wanted to impersonate.

One of the newest types of social attack scams is called Smishing, which is a phishing scam sent as an SMS text message. Protect yourself and beware. You should always be aware of anything you receive via mail, email, or text message. As more and more companies sell mailing and information lists for a profit, unscrupulous groups and individuals will find newer and more clever ways to part you from your money and/or personal information. These types of social engineering attacks, unfortunately, are an ever more present fact of life online. Please be careful of what you click on.

Windows 8 has now been promoted to RTM as the released build number 9200, not build 8888, as some in the developer community had previously expected. The big OEMs should soon be getting their "gold master copies" to start producing PCs, laptops, & tablets. MSDN members should have their downloadable bits available by August 15th, and general availability should be around October 26th.

Yahoo! scores a coup, as it snags Google employee #20, top executive Marissa Mayer, to become their new CEO. She has been responsible for some of Google's most prominent products, and this appointment should send a signal that Yahoo is serious about technology once again.

A new hack in Apple's iOS (for iPhone and iPad) gives users free content from within iOS apps that they would normally have to pay for. Note: the devices in question must be modified before this exploit can be taken advantage of, so for average users out there, let's not get too excited....

Almost a half million Yahoo passwords are leaked following a server hack. Some 450,000 Yahoo account ID and password combinations were hacked and then subsequently released by a group called 'D33Ds Company' using a technique called a SQL injection attack. The group said they hope companies "...will take this as a wake-up call" in how they manage security.

Cross-platform Trojan can check your OS and will Attack Windows, Mac, & Linux: A new 'trojan' malware variant can detect what Operating System your computer is running and deliver the appropriate payload to your PC.

Facebook blames a 'bug' for writing over contact email addresses....     after it tries to tell millions of users they're all just confused about how to check email.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......   riiiiiiiiiiiiight....

The iPhone turns 5 years old today!

Apple's MobileMe service is closing tomorrow to make way for iCloud. Unsaved data will no longer be accessible.

Looks like Adobe officially will not be supporting Flash Player on Android 4.1 aka Jelly Bean, as it looks to the future in the mobile space.

Microsoft, in an effort to get Windows users to leave the past behind, announces that it will support upgrades (in one form or another) all the way back to Windows XP.

Today it's all things Google at the Google I/O developers conference, where they step up their challenges to Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft with everything from a Google branded tablet, to a spherical media streamer, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system updates, the magical Google Glass project, and more!

Microsoft dives into the hardware market with its own pair of Microsoft branded tablets. Is there anything beneath the Surface that can help give Redmond a touch of success in the mobile space?

Samsung launches the Galaxy S III smartphone. International versions will have a Exynos quad-core CPU and 1GB of ram, U.S. & Canadian version will have a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor and 2GB of ram with built-in 4G LTE radio.

Latest Mac Malware Attack Is a Wake-Up Call for Apple and Mac OS X Users.

California and other states pass legislation to keep Facebook accounts and passwords away from employers.

The folks at Apple, down in Cupertino, CA launch the New 3rd Generation iPad, and CNET News takes a hands-on look at all the high definition goodness.

Google is ready to begin their fiber rollout in both Kansas Cities, where homes will eventually be connected with speeds that are upwards of 100 times faster than the current average high-speed connection.

President Obama visits Intel's Chandler, AZ chip plant, to push for an "America where we make stuff and sell stuff all over the world..."

The Super Bowl will be streamed online and to Verizon smart phones for the first time, giving viewers more ways than ever to catch the Big Game.

This is the month that Google Ice Cream Sandwich, a new era for Android, which finally merges the phone and tablet versions of Android into a unified platform.

1955 - 2011, Steve Jobs has passed away, and left the world a better, and certainly more interesting place, for his having been among us. He, and Apple, truly did make the things that people wanted, before even they knew they wanted them.
His combination of vision, drive, & showmanship will not soon be duplicated.

The iPhone 4 is released, with a clever new antenna system, but without 4G.

The NEW MyBrotherSteve.com site goes live.

The new Website for the Food Bank of Yolo County goes live, after significant upgrades for both design and functionality.

Swarthout Studios picks MyBrotherSteve.com to update two website properties.

Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS) partners with MyBrotherSteve.com to bring a better web experience to their visitors.

Have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season. We'll see you next year.