Monthly Archives: May 2015
Chinese Army Bans Smart Watches
Breaking Bad Ransomware Takes No Half Measures
Photobucket Hackers Face Charges
5 questions with: Tomáš Heřmanský (Product Manager)
Tomáš Heřmanský
Tomáš joined Avast in March 2014 as a Product Manager for Avast Mobile Security. Born in Čáslav, a small town in central Bohemia, he moved to Prague during high school with plans to study at the Police Academy of the Czech Republic. After a while, Tom decided he wanted to study and work in IT instead. After gaining experience while working at a successful Czech startup, taking on jobs as a freelancer and starting his own company focused on cloud document management, Tom joined Avast’s mobile team. In his free time, Tom enjoys climbing, cycling, writing and restoring his classic Škoda 1000 MB car.
1. What is Avast’s mobile team out to accomplish?
We’d like to become the most trusted mobile tools developer, allowing users to live their lives with their mobile devices safely and more easily.
2. Who or what helps you in coming up with new, creative ideas?
My colleagues are a huge inspiration to me. That’s one thing that I really enjoy about working at Avast – anyone and everyone can come up with new ideas to brainstorm. We are one big think tank. 
3. What’s one thing that every user should know about his/her mobile device?
Users should be aware of the risks that mobile malware poses to their personal information and data. Although malware on mobile devices is less likely to break a user’s device than that of a PC, malicious apps can harvest and steal a lot of personal data. Even apps that aren’t malicious (often free apps) can access a lot of personal information. The more personal info that is shared, the more likely it is that a user’s privacy could become compromised.
4. What’s your favorite security tip?
Make sure to be careful when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks. Packet sniffing, or the monitoring of data traveling over a network, can be used to steal information and is very easy for hackers to carry out. It’s in your best interest to use a virtual private network (VPN) when connecting to unsecured networks.
5. Name one goal you’ve set for yourself at Avast.
I’d like to see Avast Mobile Security (AMS) become the most popular app that provides users with a straightforward, user-friendly overview of app permissions. AMS is an extremely versatile app with lots of potential, and I envision it serving as a true “guarding angel” for users, protecting them against mobile malware and allowing them to become familiar with the apps they use on a daily basis.
Avast’s mobile team recently held the second Avast Mobile Internal Conference (AMIC) in Prague, where the entire team came together to keep one another in the loop about the company’s apps and products, team activities, and goals for the department’s future. A series of lectures and interactive activities encouraged synergy and collaboration between product teams. In addition to everything that was accomplished at AMIC, the mobile team still managed to have quite a bit of fun at the conference. We’d like to congratulate the mobile department on this successful and productive event!
Adobe release critical security patches
Earlier this May, Adobe announced that, on Tuesday 12 May, it will release two vital updates to Adobe Reader and Acrobat that address critical security flaws.
Although Adobe has not yet announced what the issues are, all Adobe users should ensure that they install the update as soon as it becomes available to them.
Keeping your software up to date is one the simplest and most effective ways of keeping your device safe. New bugs and vulnerabilities emerge all the time and developers release updates to mitigate the threats.
For more information on how updating software helps protect your PC, watch the video below from AVG Security Awareness Director Michael McKinnon.
How updating software helps protect your PC
Video
How updating software helps keep you safe
5 practical tips to avoid ransomware in your email
Tips to avoid ransomware in your email – a common way for extortion-based malware to propagate itself.
The post 5 practical tips to avoid ransomware in your email appeared first on We Live Security.
Seven things your kids shouldn’t do online
It’s not unusual nowadays to hear people say that if you want to know how to operate any technical device, ask a child, and they’re not kidding! Computers, tablets or smartphones with Internet access are all a part of children’s lives and kids seemingly take to the digital world likes ducks to water.
Such access to technology and the Internet from such an early age means parents now have to control not only what kids watch on TV, but also the content they can be exposed to over the Web.
The Internet offers so many positive things for children but it can also leave them unprotected against threats or even dangerous people.
Seven things your kids shouldn’t do online
1. Talk to strangers
Social networks, WhatsApp… there are now many channels through which strangers can contact your children. The naivety of children often means they aren’t aware of where danger can be lurking. The anonymity afforded by the Internet is almost more dangerous than in real life.
2. Share personal information
Many of the things we do on the Internet involve sharing, in one way or another, confidential information. Adults tend to be far more aware of what data they can reveal than children are. You should talk with your children and make them aware of the dangers of providing certain information online.
3. Play without time limits
Almost all children want to download games to keep themselves amused and to have new challenges. In theory, this doesn’t become a problem until they end up spending all their free time doing it. This can affect their relationship with their environment and with other children of their age and they can ignore other responsibilities in order to keep playing. What do we recommend? Set a time limit for everything.
4. Having a profile in Social Networks
Facebook, Tuenti, Twitter, Ask.Fm, Instagram… Nowadays, there are multiple platforms in which children would like to be present, but is it recommended? The age at which someone can have an account depends on the platform. Find out more about it when talking to your child about this, and most importantly, control the privacy of their information once they have logged in.
5. Download inappropriate apps
Google Play and Apple Store offer thousands of apps, many of which are designed to make our everyday lives easier, but it is essential to know exactly what you are downloading and what information you give to and receive from these apps. Not all download sources are safe or trustworthy. Even within Google Play there are malicious apps that subscribe you to premium-rate SMS services or install other programs without your consent. Tell your children to ask your permission before downloading an app and find about it yourself first.
6. Enter websites with inappropriate content for children
Deliberately or not, children may visit websites with content that is ill-suited for their age group. In many cases, just checking the browser history on the computer, tablet or smartphone is not enough. Parental control features let you decide the websites that kids can visit and block those that are inappropriate.
7. Believe they’ve won something
We all receive constant invitations to take part in a prize draw or even messages claiming that we have won some fantastic prize. In order to claim the prize, you are almost always asked to provide some personal information. It’s important to teach children that nobody is going to give them a latest generation smartphone just because they send in their personal data.
8. Suffer cyber-bullying
Given the seriousness of these attacks, children often hide the truth about cyber-bullying from their own parents. Cyber-bullying is bullying among children but carried out across the Web. It is carried out by people from the child’s environment, so it’s important to observe their reactions when using the Internet or interacting with other children on social networks. This way you can detect if there is anything wrong or if their behavior changes.
The post Seven things your kids shouldn’t do online appeared first on MediaCenter Panda Security.
Whistleblower claims cybersecurity firm hacked clients
A cybersecurity firm is accused of hacking into potential clients in order to extort potential customers, according to Engadget.
The post Whistleblower claims cybersecurity firm hacked clients appeared first on We Live Security.
‘Macro virus’ are back: threats of the past that will haunt us in the future
Maybe you don’t remember, but in 1999 Melissa was an extremely popular name within cybersecurity. This cyber virus infected more than 100.000 computers in only three days. It was a macro type malware, that is, a virus that hid the malicious source code in an Office document programming. When the user opened a Word or Excel document containing Melissa, it quickly infected all the Microsoft Office products. Its propagation speed broke records.
Almost 20 years after, ‘macro virus’ are becoming again a worldwide plague. Microsoft has confirmed this trend, and according to the company, there are more than half a million computers infected, especially in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy or Germany.
Cybercriminals have realized that the most simple and traditional methods continue working, and therefore, they try infecting computers through Word with these simple virus. “In the past couple of months, we have observed the resurgence of malicious VBA macros (programmed in Visual Basic for Applications),” said security expert Gabor Szappanos in a recent study entitled ‘Virus is not dead’. “This time, not self-replicating virus, but simple downloader Trojan codes”.
Office 2007 repelled a great extent of these virus- macros were disabled in the configuration by default- but attackers found new ways of spreading the virus. This Hungarian researcher has studied how the virus creators rely on an external attack vector: our own behavior. “They prepared the content of the documents in such a way that it would lure the recipient into enabling the execution of macros, and thus open the door for infection”, explains Szappanos. The user opens the document, enables the macros as directed and the virus begins to roam freely.
The point is that every day we receive dozens of emails with potentially dangerous attachments. Although we are aware that clicking ‘run’ on an ‘.exe’ file can be risky, we don’t stop to think it when an Office document asks us to enable our macros. We just accept it without thinking about the consequences.
The macro virus come-back reveals that neither the sophistication nor the novelty are the most important factors when quickly spreading malware. They just need a naive user to willingly open a document from an unknown sender.
The fact is that we hardly ever stop to think why someone would want us to download an attachment. We just open it, despite the risks to our safety. Now, we will have to think it twice.
The post ‘Macro virus’ are back: threats of the past that will haunt us in the future appeared first on MediaCenter Panda Security.