Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
Symantec statement on source code release and our opinion
January 17th, 2012We have reviewed the below statement from Symantec and while we are alerting you around this information it is our belief we do not have any current customers who are at risk. If you have any questions or would like for us to do an additional review of your environment, please contact our helpdesk at 770.514.1640 or help@ajcomputers.com.
Statement from Symantec Corporate
In an effort to keep you up-to-date on the unfolding events surrounding the
Symantec source code disclosure, further investigation of the claims made by
Anonymous brings us to believe that the disclosure was the result of a theft of
source code that occurred in 2006. Since 2006, Symantec has instituted a number
of policies and procedures to prevent a similar incident from occurring.
Affected products include:
- Norton Antivirus Corporate
Edition - Norton Internet Security
- Norton SystemWorks (Norton
Utilities and Norton GoBack) - pcAnywhere 12.0, 12.1 and 12.5
- Symantec Endpoint Protection
v11.0, which is four years old - Symantec AntiVirus v10.2, which
is five years old code, and a product that has been discontinued
Due to the age of the exposed source code,
except as specifically noted below, Symantec customers – including those
running Norton products — should not be in any increased danger of cyber
attacks resulting from this incident.
Customers of Symantec’s pcAnywhere product may face a slightly increased security
risk as a result of this exposure. Symantec is currently in the process of
reaching out to our pcAnywhere customers to make them aware of the situation
and to provide remediation steps to maintain the protection of their devices
and information.
How you can help customers using Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton
Internet Security, or Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack)
By keeping your customers’ solutions and virus definitions updated to the
latest version, you will help ensure protection against any new possible
threats that might result from this incident. Additional steps to take include
confirming that your customers are following best practices for protection
technology settings: tamper protection and IPS technologies defend against
vulnerabilities. Also consider enabling the uninstall password feature. This
helps prevents malware or other software from uninstalling Symantec AntiVirus
v10.2 or Symantec Endpoint Protection v11.0.
How you can help customers using pcAnywhere
As always with any remote control product (such as pcAnywhere), it is extremely
important that best practices are followed regarding physical security,
endpoint security, network perimeter security and secure remote access. For
example, all computers should have an endpoint protection technology installed
that is current and up-to-date. Corporate firewalls should not allow inbound or
outbound access to pcAnywhere without using VPN tunnels. Unauthorized
individuals should not be permitted on company property. Additionally,
companies should employ best practices when it comes to the configuration of
pcAnywhere – e.g. password strength, password retry limits, and requiring the
user to approve remote connections.
Symantec is committed to eliminating the increased risk as a result of the
exposure. In addition to a partner FAQ, we will also provide a technical white
paper that addresses initial remediation steps and issue maintenance patches as
a final step.
Given the nature of this ongoing investigation, we have no further details to
disclose at this time but will provide updates as we confirm additional facts.
For general information updates, please visit go.symantec.com/sourcecode.
For specific questions, please contact your Symantec account representative or
reference the partner FAQ or technical white paper being made available to you
via your partner account manager.
Are you ready for …. everything?
September 6th, 2011Normally this time of year, I’d be thinkin about being ready for football season, the NASCAR chase or the kids to all finally be back in school - but over the past few weeks there’s been a number of events which have occured which brought out my “are you ready for anything that can happen?”. There’s been 3 earthquakes, a hurricane, flooding, 2 tropical storms and then the usual plethora of man made chaos in the world. So the question here is – what you are doing to be prepared.
September is National Preparedness Month (ready.gov) and typically focuses on natural disaster preperation especially as severe weather season is upon us. But the real question to any family or business is – What are you prepared for? Do you have a plan for an event which causes you to leave your house or office? Do you know who all your utility providers are and how to contact them? What about critical information around letting friends and business associates know what is happening and how to get in touch with you. There a loads of great information out there along with templates to use around organizing information and gathering all of details necessary. All of these are great ways to get oranized, but sometimes you just don’t have the time to keep up with all of the changing information. Here’s a couple of simple ways to deal with all of this:
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Make sure your computers are backed up somewhere off-site – we call this cloud based backups – there are even some free backup plans if you have only a small amount of data, all automated
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Use an inexpesive scanner to digitize all of your statements, receipts, etc - along with the backups, this gives you easy access to the information and allows you to get rid of the overwhelming load of paper you’ve been keeping.
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Make sure you have a couple of essentials like cash, flashlights and gas in your car – I know it sounds simple but a lot of people just expect ATMs and gas stations to be open – the recent flooding in New Jersey towns prove how easy it is for these things to be knocked out.
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Have a communication plan – know who to call when you have an emergency and let friends, family and business assocaites know something is going on – this way people who are worried about you at least know you have a plan and when you will get back to them.
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Have a backup communication plan – with the east coast earthquake, the cellular network was overwhelmed and people were unable to contact others. Everything from BlackBerry Messenger, Skype, email, FaceTime, etc were all up and running as normal even though the major carriers where unable to connect phone calls.
So as you can see, almost anything can happen in a very short time frame, but if you take just a couple of minutes and make some preperations in advance, you can be ready for almost anything.
Spam Comes In All Forms – This One Carries the Wikileaks Moniker
December 8th, 2010Spam, and the massive destruction that accompanies it, has a way of riding on the back of whatever topic is popular at the moment. Right now, the latest news is spam carrying a Wikileaks worm. Symantec released an article today warning the public of the threat entitled “IRAN Nuclear BOMB!” from the Wikileaks organization which is not the case. The only content is a URL, which, when clicked, will download a threat identified as W32.Spyrat.
W32.Spyrat opens a backdoor using a predetermined port and IP address, allowing an attacker to perform the following actions on the compromised computer:
- Read, write, and execute files
- Steal stored passwords
- Issue commands
- Activate and view a webcam, if present
- Log keystrokes
- Create an HTTP proxy to route traffic through the compromised computer
Do not open this email or click on the URL if received. Read on for the full article at Symantec .
Julie Settle, A&J Computers Inc.
8 Tips to Stay Cyber Safe
October 15th, 2010The month of October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). NCSAM is a national public awareness campaign to encourage everyone to protect their computers and our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure. Cyber security requires vigilance 365 days per year. However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), the primary drivers of NCSAM, coordinate to shed a brighter light in October on what home users, schools, businesses and governments need to do in order to protect their computers, children, and data.
Online:
- Keep your personal information private on social networks.
- Install a URL scanning tool to alert you of potentially harmful web links.
- Review your bank account and credit card statements regularly for questionable charges.
- Review your credit report and credit score regularly.
- Choose difficult encrypted passwords, consider using KeePass to safely store all your passwords.
On Your Computer:
- Keep your operating system and software programs up to date.
- Install these type software programs: anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall .
- Back up your computer data regularly.
Below are our recommend downloads to keep your computer safe:
- Anti-Virus: AVG Antivirus, Symantec Anti-Virus, Trend Micro AntiVirus
- Firewall: MS Windows firewall
- Anti-Spyware: Webroot’s Spy Sweeper
- URL Link Scanner: AVG LinkScanner
- Credit Report: Federal Trade Commission
- Credit Score: Credit Karma
- Password: KeePass
Below are additional sites listed by the NCSAM:
- Anti-Virus: ESET NOD32 Antivirus, F-Secure Internet Security, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Norton AntiVirus, Webroot Internet Security
- Firewall: ZoneAlarm, Norton Internet Security
- Anti-Spyware: PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus 2011, STOPzilla (removal)
- Credit Report: Equifax, TrustedID
- Credit Score: myFICO
A&J Computers offers solutions for all your IT security needs. Visit us at ajcomputers.com for more details or contact with questions.
^ Julie Settle
A&J Computers Inc.
My observations and opinions on BlackBerry DevCon 2010
October 4th, 2010I just returned from the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco. As part of the event staff I typically don’t go to sessions and while I get a sense of how things are going – I don’t normally get the ‘vibe’ from attendees. This year RIM threw all that out the window with a couple of announcements – the PlayBook, WebWorks and a change to AppWorld.
First the big news – RIM is releasing a new tablet device called the PlayBook – while there are a ton of sites and blogs that will give you all the tech specs and other things – here’s my take: the PlayBook is a logical extension to your blackberry smartphone. Providing an enhanced platform including adobe flash and air which gives application developers more features – I see the PlayBook opening up a number of web based and widget based application areas for companies like ours and enabling a much easier development experience. From reading email on a larger screen to multitasking blackberry and walking around a conference with all the key information at your fingertips – this is a positive development for corporate users. From an it perspective – one the device is unpaired from your smartphone (bluetooth) all your email and other sensitive information is gone – making the security person in me feel better at night. So this seems like a win/win device for us here and really I can’t wait for 2011 to come so I can get one (availability in North America slated for q1).
WebWorks is the rebranded and improved widget technology. RIM made a bold move here by open sourcing the runtime and taking a major step forward to attract developers to the device. By allowing a developer to harness the power of the web, access on-device items like email, GPS, BBM and others – the platform is staring to compete on an even level with other device OSes and make development of the so-called ‘super apps’ a ton easier with the removal of the need to code in java. We will be building some super-apps in the very near future and enable our customers to do stuff on their blackberry smartphones we’ve only just discussed in the past. An additional benefit to open sourcing the runtime – the arrival of extension development. We all know the base of any runtime environment is great (a la .net, java, Silverlight, etc.) – but it’s the extension and control developers which truly empower app developers to take good apps to great apps. If you’re a developer, this is the platform to build BlackBerry apps on.
The final announcement was around the change in policy by RIM for developers who want to submit the application to AppWorld. Normally a token fee was charged for administrative purposes and to stop the ‘truly useless’ applications from going up on AppWorld. Well no more – at DevCon 2010 RIM announced they are going to waive this fee for developers. While a seemingly small item, this allows the hobbyist developer a no-cost option to publish their application to the masses and opens up development to a whole new genre.
Overall DevCon 2010 was a great experience as always – one thing I found out as I was writing this is the BlackBerry Developer Zone will make available the recordings from DevCon 2010 to all its members for free. That content is being produced and should be up soon. If you’re not a member and you didn’t get a chance to become a member, join now for free and see what you’ve been missing (http://blackberry.com/developer).
For any of you who missed the keynotes, announcements, etc. – you can check it out at http://www.blackberrydevcon.com (shameless plug for our web site development team). WES 2011 is in 7 short months (May 3-5, 2011) in Orlando, Florida – maybe we’ll see you there.
Good-Bye San Francisco, thanks for the hospitality for a 2nd year and we’ll see you again very soon.
