1. April 2009 by admin.

ASMT Occassional Bulletin…

Fears of a Conficker Meltdown Greatly Exaggerated

* A lot of people are in an uproar about a supposed activation date of April 1st … for it to possibly do some nasty things. For most of my customers yachting and otherwise the bulletin from me is just make sure that you are getting Windows Updates as often as you can. If you have a full time Internet connection that doesn’t cost per use, then have Updates on Automatic. Otherwise you may want to set it for Manual or Notify me but don’t download. You should also have an up-to-date Anti-Virus solution perhaps with other malware/spyware protection built-in to it, as well as making sure that Windows Firewall is on and working or you are using another firewall solution that you know is working.

The exploit vectors that let Conficker in to a computer are…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

… previously patched vectors / problems that MS updates have already fixed. So being up-to-date should prevent an individual computer from getting infected.

Do the normal things like Not opening Emails attached files from someone when you were not expecting them. If you get an attachment that you were not expecting email the person and confirm that they did manually and intentionally send you something.

Don’t go to web sites that are not well known, and if you do don’t download anything from other than official sources. Those that do peer-to-peer file sharing like Limewire or Bit Torrents can be making themselves vulnerable because those files come in pieces from unknown people around the world.

http://www.pcworld.com:80/businesscenter/article/162126/article.html?tk=nl_bpxnws

Worries that the notorious Conficker worm will somehow rise up and devastate the Internet on April 1 are misplaced, security experts said Friday.

Conficker is thought to have infected more than 10 million PCs worldwide, and researchers estimate that several million of these machines remain infected.

(more at the link…) 

—
Alan Spicer

DBA Alan Spicer Telcom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
Computer Services, Wired/Wireless Networking,
Cell/Sat/Landline Communications, General Consulting…
Marine, Business, Small Office and Home Office (SOHO)

* http://blog.marinetelecom.net/

* http://www.marinetelecom.net/
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* 954-683-3426

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