Showing posts with label malware. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malware. Show all posts

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Phishing nearly caught me

So I'm doing a little leisurely Sunday web surfing.  I leave the machine to make a cup of hot chocolate.  When I get back, I have a new window open, one I've never seen before.  Looks official.  And it says there is an emergency browser update, hot off the presses, and I ought to click right here to install the update.  It will only take a few seconds. 
  I nearly clicked.  Which probably would have been a big mistake. 
  But I hesitated, and thought.  This isn't the way Firefox updates.  They never do a full screen window, their update routine looks different.  In fact, I just updated Firefox to version 27.0.1  a couple of days ago.  And it didn't look anything like this.  So, I closed the window, closed Firefox.
   Restarting Firefox, I clicked on the "check for updates" button inside Firefox, and lo and behold, Firefox reports himself all up to date.  So much for emergency browser updates.
   The scary part is, that update browser window managed to force itself onto my PC with no help from me.  That's kinda unusual.  Then it wanted me to click on a button.  I wonder why.  Here is a hostile website, powerful enough to move into my computer all by itself.  Anything that powerful can do pretty much anything it pleases.  Why does it want to get a mouse click from me? 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Apple Got Hacked

Yesterday Apple announced that a "small number" of employee's Mac's were infected by visiting a software development site.  Wow, a Mac attack after all that Appletalk about how only Windows gets infected by virii.  A "small number" presumably means something less than all the computers at Apple.  And, hard working Apple employees were infected at a software development site, not those nasty porn sites.  Apple workers never watch porn on the job.  Right.
  Since the infection occurred by just visiting a website, that means the browser did it.  The Apple browser got stupid and ran a program off that website, something it should never do, but all commercial browsers are doing today. 
  What the world needs is a secure browser that never ever executes programs from anywhere.  You would think such a browser would sell fairly well.  Maybe some of the flashier websites would look less flashy, but I'll take secure over flashy anyday.