anti-malware – MBM Ltd – IT Support and Cloud Services

Mark Northall
Feb, Mon, 2015

Tip

Uk SMEs facing an unprecedented level of attempted online fraud

According to experts at smallbusiness.co.uk the Uk is experiencing an unprecedented level of attempted online fraud this month – the reason is a simple one as the article explains
Data from payment processing company Worldpay suggests instances of fraud could rocket by as much as 80 per cent in February as hackers start to capitalise on customer data harvested during a hectic Christmas shopping period.
Tim Lansdale, head of payment security at Worldpay says, ‘We see a dip in fraud around Christmas as hackers go on the hunt for information, using the online sales rush to stockpile thousands of customer card details.
‘It isn’t until February that they start cashing in on all the data they’ve collected. Other breaches can last much longer; attackers might decide to keep returning to their targets, sometimes for years.’
During 2011-2014, the average data breach exposed 284 days of card payments. Worldpay’s analysis shows breaches lasting from 11 days at the lowest end of the scale, to 1,723 days at the other extreme.
The company says small businesses are by far the biggest target for hackers, accounting for 85.7 per cent of UK data breaches. Virtually all data breaches (99.3 per cent) happened online, rather than at the point of sale, as the UK’s e-commerce market continues to boom.
In 2014, businesses in the entertainment, hobby and leisure industries accounted for 23.3 per cent of all card data breaches, followed by clothing and footwear stores (16.3 per cent) and jewellery, beauty and gifts (11.6 per cent).
Businesses in the entertainment industry, particularly online ticket booking systems, tend to make easy prey for hackers due to the high number of credit and debit card transactions they process online each day.
The clean-up costs of being targeted can run to tens of thousands of pounds, with a standard investigation costing £11,250 on average, and attracting at least a £8,000 penalty, not including the costs of lost goods and damage to reputation.
Lansdale says, ‘Data breaches can be ruinous, so its vital small business owners know the risks and take the necessary measures to protect themselves and their customers and employees.
‘You wouldn’t leave your store unlocked overnight, yet so few businesses are doing enough to protect their online shop fronts and keep hackers at bay.’
Worldpay advises taking measures such as changing all your default passwords, having a third party host your payment page, and testing your firewalls at least every three months,
Securely destroying all card data records when no longer needed, and avoiding storing the three digits ‘CVC’ number on the back of the card, are also measures that should be observed.
At MBM we can help Small Business combat this fraud. We would love to speak to you about protecting your data.

Mark Northall
Dec, Wed, 2014

Online Backup , Tip

The Invisible destroyer

How protected do you feel in your Business ? Is everything you do being watched? How common are viruses in today’s workplace? Look at any computer in your office. You can’t see the security threats, but they’re swirling round it like a malicious cloud. They’re multiplying and getting more sophisticated all the time. If one of them gets in, it could do untold damage to your business. And the hard truth is that anti-virus software simply isn’t enough any more.

Many business owners assume their systems and networks are protected. But what happens when people take their work laptops out of the office? What if they open a zip file that’s pretending to be from an online marketplace ?

What if they click on a website picture that has malicious code embedded in it?

The worst viruses and malware will immobilize a computer. If it’s on your network, the problem will spread through your business. Every computer will probably need completely wiping. While that’s being done, everything grinds to a halt costing you precious man-hours.

Here at MBM we take these threats very seriously we pride ourselves on our security record and endeavour to make sure all your data is protected from attack or theft.

We can provide solutions to protect your network from unwanted threats. These solutions can be installed on local PCs and servers to monitor threat activity and quickly deal with it. The software has the ability to update itself silently over the Internet and provide a centralized server-based management console to monitor threats and provide reports. We can also provide our own mail scanning solution called InterLinx Filtered Email to filter and clean Emails before they even arrive at your desk, this is done by routing your inbound and outbound mail through our secure scanning servers on the Internet; this ensures that both you and your mail recipients are protected.

If you would like to find out more about what we do, then please call us to arrange a meeting. You’ll meet a network engineer, not a salesman! Call 01902 324494 or email sales@mbmltd.co.uk

mbmadmin
Jul, Fri, 2014

Data Backup , Tip

Why is Malware written?

Carrying on from last weeks Blog the answer to the “what is malware?” question cannot be complete without exploring the ‘why’ of its creation. By now, you should have a pretty clear idea of what type of damage can be done as a result of malware, but you might be wondering – why do programmers create malware in the first place?
Student Hackers and Cyber-crooks

In the early days of software, programmers wrote malware mostly to prank one another, or to show off their technical skills. These programmers, who were usually students had a great sense of humour but did not have much business sense. These students eventually graduated and got jobs. Their new motivation was now money, and how to make more of it using their skills. Some of these programmers learned that they can make thousands a day if they successfully exploit malware to their advantage.

These people went on to become cyber-crooks, defrauding individuals and organizations for financial gain. These criminals steal personal banking information to transfer money out of users’ bank accounts and into their own. They also launch distributed denial of service attacks against corporations and ask for money in exchange for an end to the attack.

Worms, zombies and distributed denial of service attacks are a good way to inflict mass damage on a global scale and are therefore very appealing to cyber-activists. These people want to get a message across and are ready to do so by utilizing any means necessary and this includes writing malware that causes damage, gets them noticed, and enables them to announce their messages and beliefs to a large audience.

Governments are also part of the game. A cyber-war between countries is raging. Some countries such as China, Syria, and America are rumoured to be state-sponsoring cyber-gangs whose only purpose is to research and develop new malware techniques capable of infiltrating government agencies and infrastructures. Malware has recently been spotted in the wild that was designed to infect SCADA systems with the scope of shutting down nuclear reactors. Some reports suggest that this worm, which might have been created by the Americans, was successful in shutting down several Iranian nuclear power plant coolers.

The malware problem is huge and is growing fast. By the end of 2010 the counter for unique malware programs stood at 14 million, with a staggering 60,000 pieces of new malicious code detected every day. Recently a worm called Koobface — which targeted people on social networks — netted its creators over 2 million dollars in just 12 months. Another worm, the Mariposa is said to have created the biggest network of zombie machines in the world. Experts could never determine its exact size, but estimated that over 12 million computers were infected. This worm dropped spyware capable of stealing sensitive information from victims, such as bank account numbers and credit card details. All this was created by a single hacker in Spain who fortunately made a mistake which exposed him and got him arrested.

The industry is fighting back. Numerous security solutions are available from many vendors that help stop malware infections. The threat however is a moving target. Hackers keep finding new ways to write bigger and better malware, the incentives are all there and the waging war is showing no signs of slowing down.

Worried that you might be exposed ? Speak to MBM

mbmadmin
Jul, Thu, 2014

Cloud , Tip

Do you know what Malware is ?

So what is Malware? Short for malicious software, malware is as old as software itself, and programmers have been authoring it for as long as they have been authoring legitimate software. There are many reasons why a programmer might create malware. These reasons vary from simple pranks and experiments to serious organized Internet crime. Malware exists in many forms, most of which you’ve probably already heard of. The most common types of malware are viruses, trojans, worms, spyware and zombies.

This article will cover the inner workings of the most common types of malware, and will also explain why malware is created and the kind of damage that it can inflict on individuals, corporations and governments.

Virus

Malware manifests itself in different forms; the most well-known is the virus.

Computer viruses are similar to their biological counterparts because they are capable of self-replication. The prime motivation of a virus is not to cause damage, but to clone itself onto another host so that it can spread further. If a virus causes damage it is more likely to be detected, and for this reason virus authors employ stealth techniques to keep it unnoticed. A good virus has a very small footprint and can remain undetected for a very long time.

Damage is not always a side-effect of infection. Sometimes damage has been purposely built-in by the programmer. Some viruses are time activated; they silently spread for a number of days, months or years and will suddenly activate and do damage on one particular date. Other viruses are event driven. They will activate when something particular happens on a host, or when a command is sent to them via a covert Internet channel.

Worms

Worms are very similar to viruses in many ways. The biggest difference between a worm and a virus is that worms are network-aware. A virus finds it very easy to replicate itself amongst files on the same computer, however it has a hard time jumping from one computer to another. A worm overcomes this computer-to-computer hurdle by seeking new hosts on the network and attempting to infect them.

This is an important difference: in the past viruses could take years before moving from one corporation to another, or from one country to another. Worms are capable of going global in a matter of seconds. This makes it very hard for them to be controlled and stopped.

Spyware

The primary function of spyware is to snoop on a user’s activity and send back the information it gathers to a hacker. Spyware does not have any infection mechanisms. It is usually dropped by trojans (and also by viruses and worms). Once dropped, it installs itself on the victim’s computer and sits there silently to avoid detection.

Once spyware is successfully installed it will begin collecting information. It is very common for spyware to log all the keys that the user types. This type of spyware is called a keylogger and can capture interesting information such as user names, passwords, credit card numbers and email addresses. Keyloggers capture every key stroke, so entire emails, documents and chats can be read by the malicious hacker.

There are more sophisticated forms of spyware that hook themselves to the network interface and siphon off all network data that enters or leaves the infected computer. This allows the hacker to capture entire network sessions giving them access to files, digital certificates, encryption keys and other sensitive information.

If you would like to know more from guys who don’t speak Geek – call MBM

mbmadmin
May, Wed, 2014

Data Backup , Tip

What are Trojans ?

Looking at common terms within the IT world we look today at Trojans.

Trojans are malicious programs that perform actions that have not been authorised by the user. These actions can include:

Blocking data deleting data modifying data copying data disrupting the performance of computers or computer networks

Unlike computer viruses and worms, Trojans are not able to self-replicate.

How Trojans can impact you

Trojans are classified according to the type of actions that they can perform on your computer:

Backdoor
A backdoor Trojan gives malicious users remote control over the infected computer. They enable the author to do anything they wish on the infected computer – including sending, receiving, launching and deleting files, displaying data and rebooting the computer. Backdoor Trojans are often used to unite a group of victim computers to form a botnet or zombie network that can be used for criminal purposes.
Exploit
Exploits are programs that contain data or code that takes advantage of a vulnerability within application software that’s running on your computer.
Rootkit
Rootkits are designed to conceal certain objects or activities in your system. Often their main purpose is to prevent malicious programs being detected – in order to extend the period in which programs can run on an infected computer.
Trojan-Banker
Trojan-Banker programs are designed to steal your account data for online banking systems, e-payment systems and credit or debit cards.
Trojan-DDoS
These programs conduct DoS (Denial of Service) attacks against a targeted web address. By sending multiple requests – from your computer and several other infected computers – the attack can overwhelm the target address… leading to a denial of service.
Trojan-Downloader
Trojan-Downloaders can download and install new versions of malicious programs onto your computer – including Trojans and adware.
Trojan-Dropper
These programs are used by hackers in order to install Trojans and / or viruses – or to prevent the detection of malicious programs. Not all antivirus programs are capable of scanning all of the components inside this type of Trojan.
Trojan-FakeAV
Trojan-FakeAV programs simulate the activity of antivirus software. They are designed to extort money from you – in return for the detection and removal of threats… even though the threats that they report are actually non-existent.
Trojan-GameThief
This type of program steals user account information from online gamers.
Trojan-IM
Trojan-IM programs steal your logins and passwords for instant messaging programs – such as ICQ, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Pager, Skype and many more.
Trojan-Ransom
This type of Trojan can modify data on your computer – so that your computer doesn’t run correctly or you can no longer use specific data. The criminal will only restore your computer’s performance or unblock your data, after you have paid them the ransom money that they demand.
Trojan-SMS
These programs can cost you money – by sending text messages from your mobile device to premium rate phone numbers.
Trojan-Spy
Trojan-Spy programs can spy on how you’re using your computer – for example, by tracking the data you enter via your keyboard, taking screen shots or getting a list of running applications.
Trojan-Mailfinder
These programs can harvest email addresses from your computer.
Other types of Trojans include:
- Trojan-ArcBomb
- Trojan-Clicker
- Trojan-Notifier
- Trojan-Proxy
- Trojan-PSW

How to protect yourself against Trojans

By installing effective anti-malware software, you can defend your devices – including PCs, laptops, Macs, tablets and smartphones – against Trojans. A rigorous anti-malware solution will detect and prevent Trojan attacks on your PC anti-malware products that defend the following devices against Trojans:

Windows PCs
Linux computers
Apple Macs
Smartphones
Tablets

We can advise on and install anti-malware products at MBM

Tag anti-malware