Security Report: (stats provided by Cisco)
- Nine in ten emails are now considered spam
- An estimated 200 billion junk mail messages per day are clogging up the internet
- "Drive-by" download attacks where hackers plant redirection scripts on legitimate sites that lead to hacker controlled sites (which are full of exploits) have become a popular method for spreading all forms of malware, including botnet clients that turn PCs into spam-churning zombies
- The U.S. is the single biggest source of spam, accounting for 17.2 per cent of junk mail. Other big offenders include Turkey (9.2 per cent), Russia (8 per cent), Canada (4.7 per cent), Brazil (4.1 per cent), India (3.5 per cent), South Korea (3.3 per cent), Germany and the UK (2.9 per cent each).
- Numerous mainstream websites are now loaded/infected with iFrames, which are malicious scripts that also redirect visitors to malware-downloading sites
- One of the big growth areas is the overall rise in vulnerabilities involving virtualization technology, which rose from 35% last year to 103% in 2008
I'll be discussing options to improve your overall security over the next couple of weeks. To immediately address the value of leveraging virtualization technology to help increase information security, I'll be discuss this in my pick for the tool of the week.
Tool of the Week: (Free)
Sandboxie http://www.sandboxie.com/
What is Sandboxie?
Sandboxie is a tool that will contain and allow applications to run within an isolated virtual space.
How does it work?
Applications that run within the sandbox cannot make system (OS) changes. They can read files but cannot write. By doing so, this prevents any malicious code from writing to the system and keeps your work contained within the sandbox. Therefore, if you pickup some malicious code while surfing (from a site that was infected), this code will not be able to reach past the sandbox to do any damage to your system.
How is it different from a virtual machine (VM)?
Sandboxie has a very small CPU footprint and unlike a VM, you do not need to share/allocate RAM between the VM and your primary PC. Sandboxie will setup just about everything for you (the default settings work quite well), but you might still need to make some minor configuration changes to meet your individual needs.
Is this the silver bullet?
No, there is no such thing when it comes to computer security; however, this is one of the many ways to increase your overall computing safety. You can still pickup tracking cookies or malicious programs while using Sandboxie, as Sandboxie is not designed to detect or disable malware. It is designed to make sure that sandboxed applications stays in the sandbox - software can't integrate into Windows and it can be completely discarded when you delete the sandbox. You can configure Sandboxie to automatically delete content within the Sandbox upon closing the application.
How do I use Sandboxie?
Since one of the major I use Sandboxie during all my browsing sessions. Once I close my session, I've configured Sandboxie to automatically delete the content/history within the Sandbox. Therefore, any accumulated or unnecessary programs are immediately discarded and never have access to my operating system.
Sandboxie is a free tool; however, a paid version is also available with a few additional features. The free version suits my needs just fine. Using this application alone will increase your overall internet security exponentially.
Tech news of the week:
1. A group of scientists (actually they were students) at the University of California were able to replicate keys (house, car, etc.) by taking a digital photo of keys at distances up to 200 ft. away. Apparently, the 'twin' key had a successful 'open lock' rate of 80%. News about this type of digital key replication has been around for quite a while and has just recently resurfaced in the news again. I've attached a report from one story posted back in November by msnbc.com
2. Google's Chrome browser officially leaves Beta. Apparently, Google's goals for stability and performance have been met, but they are still working to add additional features such as RSS and form auto-fill just to name a few. Look for them to also develop extensions to support Mac and Linux users as well. Overall, this is interesting news...since Gmail has only been in beta for what, 10 years?! (Actually, it's been around since April of 2004)
3. Attention Windows users...Did you get your updates from last week? The second Tuesday of every month, also known as "Patch Tuesday" came out with 8 security bulletins for the month of December. Six were labeled as "Critical" and two were "Important". Seven out of the eight involved patching holes in various code that was open for remote code execution. Overall, the patch addressed a total of twenty eight different vulnerabilities. Even if you have the Windows Update feature enabled, I'd double check that you have all the updates either via Secunia's website (tool of the week last week) or go to http://www.update.microsoft.com to check.
Gadget of the week:
40 Years of Mighty Mice
How 10 famous technologies got their name:
And finally, the...
Website of the week:
Leo Notenboom is an ex-Microsoft guy and 100% tech guru. If you have a tech question you might be able to find it on his website. If you can't find it, Ask Him, or I should say "Ask Leo"! And he might just respond to you directly. I highly recommend this site for both it's thoroughness and accuracy.
Next Week:
My picks for the best two (yes, there are only two) Antivirus security suites on the market today.
What I have to say might surprise you.
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