Symantec: 36% of online attacks target SMB's

Symantec  announced the findings of its June 2012 Symantec Intelligence Report, which shows 36 percent of all targeted attacks (58 per day) during the last six months were directed at businesses with 250 or fewer employees. As reported in the recent ISTR, this figure was 18 percent at the end of December 2011.

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McAfee offers free detection for massive DNSChanger Trojan scheduled to hit tomorrow

Thousands of Internet users worldwide could lose access to websites, email, chat and social networking tomorrow after the FBI shuts down temporary servers that were used to replace fraudulent servers operated by hackers.

This blackout will affect all systems infected with the DNSChanger Trojan, a malware program created to redirect the Internet traffic of unsuspecting consumers to websites from which these cybercriminals could profit.

Most users who are affected by the trojan should have long ago been alerted by their Internet Service Providers that they need to correct their DNS settings and remove the rootkit infection that is responsible. 

McAfee announced the release of free tools to help consumers check to see if their computers have been infected by the Trojan, and to help them modify and restore their Internet settings if they test positive. Consumers can simply visit www.mcafee.com/dnscheck and click a button to run a check. Take a look at this blog post from Robert Siciliano, Online Security and Safety Evangelist to McAfee, for more information:

http://blogs.mcafee.com/consumer/family-safety/on-july-9th-millions-may-lose-access-to-internet

Source- McAfee Canada

McAfee: One in every six PCs are not protected

McAfee announced the results of a global study that set out to determine the percentage of personal computer owners without any working security software and protection.Out of the 24 participating countries, Canada was ranked as the 7th least protected country. 

Key findings from the study include:

- Eighty-three (83) per cent of global PC owners have working basic security protection

- Seventeen (17) per cent of PCs scanned had no anti-virus installed or it was expired

- Canada is the 7th least protected country, with 17.9 per cent of consumers browsing the Internet without any protection. Of this group of users, 9.48 per cent of consumers have no protection installed, and 8.45 per cent of consumers have installed but disabled security, placing the country in the number two spot for this category behind Singapore.

The full results of the study can be found here.

Flashback trojan removal tool now available on Mac Software Update

All Mac users should quickly check Software Update (click on the Apple Logo at the top left hand side of the screen) in order to download the Flashback removal tool. Flashback is the Java security breach that affected over 500,000 Macs.  Users visiting insecure websites have been infected by the trojan which then compromises the host computers.

This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware.

This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets.

This update is recommended for all Mac users with Java installed.

For details about this update see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5242